The Lamp on the Hill

The snow stopped falling just after supper, and the whole lane went quiet. Ada pushed the door open and stepped out into the blue cold. Bram came after her, shaking white flakes off his striped face. Above the rooftops the clouds had torn open, and stars stood in the gap. Every window in the village held a small warm square of lamplight. Every lamp on the lane was lit. Only the lamp on the hill above the village was dark. Ada looked up at it for a long time. "Somebody forgot it," she said. Bram looked up too, and said nothing, which meant yes.

Ada fetched her lantern from the hook by the door. Inside it, a candle stub no longer than her thumb burned with a small steady flame. The hill path began past the last cottage, where the lamps ran out. After that there was only snow, and the dark between here and there. Ada's stomach went tight. "I don't like that part," she said. "The part with no lamps." Bram sat down in the snow beside her boots and waited. He was broad and warm and in no hurry at all. "We go as slow as we like," Ada said.

They walked the lane lamp by lamp. Under each one the snow turned gold, and their shadows swung around behind them like slow hands. Ada counted the lamps out loud. Four, three, two. The village made its small sounds: a door, a kettle, a pony shifting in its stall. Snow sat on the fence posts in soft caps. At the last lamp Ada stopped. Her lantern threw a little ring of light on the ground, about as wide as a washtub. Beyond it the hill went up, grey and huge and quiet. Bram stepped to the edge of the ring and waited.

Ada found that the ring of light came with her. She took ten steps and stopped. The ring came too, and Bram came too, his shoulder against her knee. She took ten more steps and stopped, and the dark did not do anything at all. It only lay there, full of snow and stars. "We go as slow as we like," Ada said, and took ten more. Behind her the village lamps grew small and gathered together like a handful of sparks. Ahead, the hill lamp rose out of the dark on its post, taller than she had thought.

The hill lamp had a glass door, and the glass door wore frost like fern leaves. Ada opened it with both hands. Inside stood a candle as tall as a milk jug, white and new, with a black curl of wick. The wind had got in and blown it out. Ada looked at her own lantern. Her candle stub was a puddle now, with one small flame standing on it, thin as a seed. She had flame and no candle. The lamp had candle and no flame. Bram made a low sound in his chest, close to a laugh.

Ada leaned her lantern in and held the small flame against the big black wick. The wick thought about it. Then it caught, and light poured out of the glass and over the snow and over Bram's white stripes and over Ada's mittens. Her own stub flickered twice and went out, and she did not mind. In the hollow base of the post she found three more candles, lying together like bread rolls. She took one, set it in her lantern, and lit it from the tall flame. "There," she said. "You keep yours. I'll keep mine."

They went down the hill with two lights now, one walking and one standing still. The hill lamp threw a long gold stripe down the slope ahead of them, so the dark part was not dark anymore. Ada walked it at the same slow pace anyway, because she liked it. "We go as slow as we like," she said, and Bram padded beside her with snow on his nose. Ada could feel her heart going, steady and pleased. Down in the lane a window opened. Someone looked up at the hill, said nothing, and closed the window again, happy.

Back in the warm, Ada set her lantern on the sill where she could see it from bed. The room smelled of candle and wool. Bram lay down on the rug with his chin on his paws. Far up through the window, the hill lamp was a small gold dot, keeping the hill company all night. Ada watched it until it swam. Her blanket rose. Her blanket fell. On the rug, Bram's breathing went slow and deep, and hers went slow to match it, and the little flame on the sill leaned once and stood still.