What the Lamps Consume

The lantern room had no seats. Celia stood with her back to the curved glass and kept one hand on her survey case, though it was in no danger of moving. The floor turned a little under her feet when the lens motor engaged. Beyond the panes, the harbor lamps marked the channel in pairs. One pair was dark.

Keeper Vey set a shallow brass bowl on the table beneath the lens. Beside it lay a donation certificate, a pen, and a small iron clip holding three slips of paper.

“The lamps will be lit before the evening boats enter,” he said.

Celia looked at the slips. The top one carried the harbor office stamp. She could read only the first word from where she stood: UNPAID.

A man came up the stairs with a cap crushed between his hands. Salt had dried white along the cuffs of his coat.

“Tomas Karr,” Vey said. “Miss Marrow is preparing the centennial survey. She is here to learn how the light is maintained.”

Tomas glanced at Celia, then at the dark lamps outside. “Fine by me.”

Vey did not reach for the bowl. “Mr. Karr, the donation is yours to refuse. I must ask you in front of a witness. Do you understand what you have offered?”

“My brother’s voice.” Tomas rolled his cap brim tight. “Not his name. Not what he said. Just how he sounded saying it.”

“And you understand that afterward you may recall his words without hearing that voice in your mind?”

“I’ve had it explained.”

“That was not my question.”

Tomas loosened his grip on the cap. “Yes. I understand.”

Vey opened a narrow case. Inside lay a clear crystal, no longer than Celia’s thumb. It rested in a bed of dry wool.

“My brother could call over half the harbor,” Tomas said, looking at it. “He didn’t need to, mind. He liked making a show of it.”

Vey waited. The lens completed another slow turn overhead, dragging a pale bar of light across Tomas’s knuckles. The glass above them gave off a faint hot-metal smell.

“Do I say his name?” Tomas asked.

“If it helps you find the recollection.”

“Renn.”

He said it toward the bowl. Celia had brought a pencil to record the procedure, but the point remained above the page.

Vey placed the crystal in the bowl and turned a small valve below the table. Salt water rose through a thin pipe until it touched the crystal. He guided Tomas’s hands to the two wooden grips on either side.

“Do not touch the water,” Vey said. “Hold the grips. Choose one time you heard him speak, and keep to that time. When you wish to stop, let go.”

Tomas shut his eyes. His cap lay by his feet, its brim bent out of shape.

For a while the bowl did nothing. A boat horn sounded beyond the glass. Tomas’s lips moved without a word. Then his right hand tightened around the grip, and the crystal clouded from its center. Light gathered in it, weak at first, then steady enough to throw the shape of the bowl onto the wall.

The lens motor gave a hard click. Outside, one of the dark harbor lamps came on. Its partner followed a breath later. Together they laid a clear path through the channel.

Tomas pulled his hands free. Water sloshed against the brass rim.

Vey closed the valve at once. “Can you tell me your name?”

“Tomas Karr.” His voice came out rough. He cleared his throat. “Renn Karr was my brother.”

“And where are you?”

“Lighthouse.” Tomas looked past Vey to the lamps. “That’s a fair bit of light.”

“It will hold through tonight’s traffic,” Vey said.

Tomas bent for his cap but did not pick it up. “He used to stand on the stern rail and tell me I’d fouled the line. Even when it was his line.” He gave a short breath that might have become a laugh. “I know the words. I can see him standing there.”

He stayed bent over. Celia set her pencil down.

“What did he sound like?” Vey asked.

Tomas straightened with the cap in his hands. His thumb worked at the ruined brim. “I can tell you what people said. Loud. Always loud.” He looked at Celia as if she might have a better word. “He wasn’t loud when it was just us.”

Vey took a clean cloth from the case and covered the bowl. He moved carefully, giving Tomas time to step away from the table.

“The first minutes can be difficult,” he said. “You may sit downstairs as long as you need.”

“I’ve got to see the harbor clerk.”

“The certificate can be taken there in the morning.”

Tomas shook his head. “He’ll be there now.”

Vey picked up the certificate and signed beneath Tomas’s mark. When he lifted the iron clip, the slips came with it. Celia moved closer to make room for Tomas to pass, and the figures were plain. Dockage. Net storage. Late charge. The total at the bottom matched the amount written beside DONATION CREDIT on the certificate, down to the last penny.

Vey clipped the slips back in place and handed the papers to Tomas. “Present this at the harbor office. The credit has been entered.”

Tomas folded them once, making a sharp crease across the stamped amounts. “Then I’d best go before someone adds another fee.”

He put on his cap. At the stair door he stopped and faced Vey.

“Will I know if I’ve got it back?” he asked.

“No,” Vey said. “The transfer is complete.”

Tomas nodded, though Celia could not see what use that answer was to him. He went down the stairs, one hand sliding along the rail. His boots rang against the iron steps until the motor covered the sound.

Vey returned the sealed crystal to its wool bed. “He was well oriented afterward,” he said. “You can put that in your notes.”

Celia picked up her pencil. She drew a line through the space where she had meant to record the lamp’s change in brightness.

“The harbor credit was the exact amount owed.”

“Yes. It is calculated before the ceremony.”

“So he came knowing what it would clear.”

“Mr. Karr chose the recollection,” Vey said. “No one selected it for him. No one compelled him to come upstairs.”

Below them, a door opened and shut. Celia looked out at the channel. The two lamps made the entrance easy to read, even through the mist. A loaded boat was already turning toward them.

“Would he have kept his berth without the credit?” she asked.

Vey shut the case. “The harbor office sets its fees. I keep the lamps lit. Neither task becomes easier because we dislike the other.”

It was an answer, and not an empty one. The boat had little room between the rocks. Someone aboard it would be glad of Tomas’s gift without ever learning his name.

Celia wrote the certificate total in her notebook. Then she wrote what Tomas had said about the stern rail. The figures fitted neatly in their column. His words ran past the ruled line.

When she finished, she could still see Tomas facing the bowl, trying to hold one voice apart from all the others he had known. He could remember his brother standing on the rail and saying the line was fouled. He could no longer hear how Renn had said it when no one else was there.