The Last Lamp on the Stair
The top stair felt like warm wool under Sena's bare feet, and she pressed down slowly to test it. It held. Bram came up behind her, broad and unhurried, his striped face pale in the dusk. Above them the cloud kingdom lay in soft terraces, one folded over the next, and the wind moved through it the way a hand moves through fur. Somewhere ahead, a small iron ring knocked against a lamp post. Tunk. Tunk. Sena counted three knocks and climbed three stairs, which seemed a fair trade. Then she stopped and looked back down the long curve of the stair. The lanterns were going out, one by one, the way candles do when nobody is minding them.
Sena walked to the nearest post and put her palm flat on the glass cup. It was cool as a river pebble. The wick inside lay curled and dark. Above it, the loose iron ring swung and knocked. Tunk. Tunk. Bram stood on his back legs and looked into the cup with her, so close his breath fogged it. "All of them?" Sena said. They followed the stair up past four more posts, and each one was dark and cool, and each ring tapped in the wind as if reminding them. At the fifth bend, something the colour of honey moved behind glass. One lantern was still awake. It burned low and slow, no bigger than a plum.
Sena knelt. The little door in the lantern opened with a click she felt in her teeth. Inside, the light was not a flame at all. It was round and soft, and it rolled into her cupped hands like warm water that had forgotten how to spill. It weighed about as much as a sparrow. She closed her fingers, and it dimmed at once, going grey at the edges. She opened them, and it brightened again, pleased. "Hold it soft, and it stays lit," she said. Bram made a low sound in his chest that meant yes. Sena stood up carefully, both hands full, and began to climb with her elbows out for balance.
The wind up here came in long pushes, not gusts, like something big breathing. It leaned on Sena's back and combed the cloud into ridges. She turned a little sideways and walked that way. Bram moved without being asked to the side the wind came from, and his body took the weight of it, and behind him the air went quiet and ordinary. The light lay steady in her palms. It threw two shadows up the stair, one of a girl and one of a badger, and the badger's shadow was rounder than he was. Tunk, said a ring somewhere above them. Tunk. "We're coming," Sena told it.
By the ninth post her arms had begun to shake, the slow shake that comes from holding something gently for a long time. She did not want to squeeze. "Bram," she said. He sat down on the stair and opened both front paws, and she tipped the light across into them. It settled into his fur without burning it, and for a moment his whole chest glowed amber, and the white stripes on his face turned gold. He held it the way you hold something a bird has laid down. Sena shook out her wrists. The ring above them tapped, patient, unhurried. Tunk. "Only a little further," she said, to her arms mostly.
The next step was loose vapour, thin as the skin on warm milk. Bram went first, testing it with one paw. Then he turned and passed the light back into Sena's hands, palm to palm, so slowly that neither of them breathed. It wobbled once and held. With his paws free, Bram gripped her elbow and drew her up over the soft place onto firm cloud. She landed with the light still burning in her cupped hands. "Good," she said, and laughed, and the light gave a small jump as if it had laughed too. Tunk, went the ring. Tunk. They climbed on, passing the glow between them whenever her fingers tired, hand to paw, paw to hand.
In a hollow off the stair, a family of cloud swifts sat in a nest of shed mist, packed together like grey thumbs. They were shivering, though the night was not cold. Sena crouched at the edge and held the light near them. Its warmth spread. The swifts leaned in, and one by one their eyes went half shut, and the nest hollow began to hold a faint glow of its own, the way a stone keeps the sun. When Sena lifted her hands again, the light she carried was smaller. She looked at it, and then at the sleeping birds, and decided that was all right. Bram was already waiting on the step above.
Higher up, mist came across the stair in wide slow sheets. Every sheet took a little of the glow, and the light shrank until it sat in one of Sena's palms, the size of a blackberry. She stopped. She turned her back to the mist and curved both hands over it, leaving a gap between her thumbs for it to breathe through. Through that gap the light steadied and rose again, thin and gold. "Hold it soft, and it stays lit," she whispered. Bram pressed his shoulder against her leg, warm as a stove, and they waited there together until the mist had finished going past. Then they went on. Tunk, said the rings ahead. Tunk.
The high terrace was a long shelf of cloud with lanterns all down its edge, twelve of them, every one dark. Sena went to the first. She opened the little door, held her hands to the gap, and let a thread of light slide off her palm and into the cup. It caught. It sat there, round and content, and began to grow. She did the same at the second, and the third. Each time, a little more of the glow left her hands. Each time, a post behind her woke up gold. Bram walked ahead and nosed each door open so she would not have to set the light down.
At the seventh lantern, what was left in Sena's hands was barely more than a spark. She looked along the shelf at the five dark posts still waiting and felt her stomach tighten. Then she made herself go slowly instead of quickly. She gave the eighth lantern a smaller thread. She gave the ninth a smaller one still. The light on her palm did not run out. It only grew quieter, the way a voice does late at night. Behind her the terrace burned soft and even, and the wind came through and moved all of it at once. Tunk, tunk, said the rings, but gently now, as if they had been answered.
The twelfth lantern hung from a hook higher than Sena could reach, even on her toes. She looked at it. Bram crouched and set his broad back against the post, and Sena climbed up, one foot on his shoulder, one hand flat on the cloud of the post for balance, the last of the light shut warm inside her other fist. Up there the wind smelled of rain a long way off. She opened her hand under the cup, and the final crumb of glow went in and unfolded and filled the glass. The ring beside it stopped knocking. Sena climbed down. Below them, the whole stair curved away, lit end to end, like a spine.
They sat with their backs against the last post. Sena's hands were empty and still warm, and she turned them over and looked at the lines on them. Bram leaned in until he took up most of the space, which was his way of saying things. Far under the terrace, Earthless and enormous, the cloud country breathed. Nothing needed doing. "Hold it soft, and it stays lit," Sena said, to no one, to the lanterns. Her voice came out slow. Bram's breathing got longer, the way it did every night, in and out like the wind coming up the stair. One by one, down the long curve, the lights began to settle low.
The lantern above them dimmed as the terrace fell asleep, because that was what it was for. Its gold went to amber. Its amber went to the colour of the inside of an eyelid. Sena watched it through lashes that kept closing on their own. She felt Bram's fur rise and fall under her cheek. The wind came once more up the stair, soft, with nothing to knock against now. The last thread of light thinned, and glowed, and let go. Then the cloud kingdom was dark and warm all over, and Sena slept there on the high shelf with her hand resting in Bram's fur.
