Twilight Oil

More troubling, though, is what my people would do if they ever knew that this city they loved, the city that protected them from the Barrenlands, was built on a foundation of lies.

Ophelia's mother squeaked into the room, the wheels of her wheel chair the source of the high-pitched noise. Her mother had awoken some time before Ophelia, but had spent a considerable amount of the morning in bed, knitting together a quilt she had been working on, while Ophelia had done her morning chores about the house following her return home at dawn after spending the time before that restoring oil to the streetlamps. At present, however, Ophelia was sitting in the lounge room before a roaring fire, The Morning Pundit—Castore's daily newspaper—in hand, waiting in uncomfortable anticipation for a knock at the door. It was already mid-afternoon, so Ophelia could already recite some of the headlines by heart.

“It's no good to see you like this,” her mother said. “Whenever you know there's a chance you'll get called out to reignite some of the lamps, you mope about at home waiting for the call. You'll get nothing you want to do done.”

“Well I don't want to get half-way through something and get called away. Besides, it's raining. There's bound to be a few that snuffed themselves out over the course of the day.”

Ophelia's mother, Amelia, despite being immobile, had still retained much of her independence. She had trouble every so often, but those moments were still considerably rare. She had become a cripple sometime around Ophelia's father's disappearance. It seemed her family, who up until then had been blessed with plenty of luck, had all their sadness brought upon them in one fell swoop, as if bad luck was accumulated over time. Her father had gotten up and walked away fourteen years ago. Ophelia had been eight, and just old enough to understand that her parents no longer loved each other. Her brother, meanwhile, had been killed in the Blue Guard, murdered by those he had called comrades. For that reason, Ophelia had become a LampLighter to provide her family with a decent income.

In Castore, besides owning a business—which was out of the cards—being a LampLighter, a banker or a Blue were about the only careers that provided a reasonable income. It was either work in one of those professions or become a peasant and live in the slums, where monster attacks were frequent and death was taken as cavalierly as many would take the time of day or the weather. And as it seemed that being a Blue was about the last thing Ophelia wanted to be after her brother's death, and that she was not very good with numbers, LampLighting was about the only profession left. It was one she enjoyed though, and it kept her plenty busy.

“But Shreeber Street is in the slums. Firstly, there are drunks everywhere, and to be honest, I'd want to rush that too, and secondly, most of the slumsters in there spend their nights huddled in the dark, so it's their own fault.”

“That will probably be the messenger now,” Ophelia said, rising from the armchair, throwing The Morning Pundit aside carelessly. She leapt to the door and opened it without looking through the peep hole, as was considered normal. As she had expected, a tall, lanky boy of about eighteen stood in the doorway, a grey raincoat pulled up around him, the hood obscuring some of his face.

Her mother appeared troubled for a moment, but it passed quickly. Then again, any call to light lamps always brought a troubled expression to Amelia's face. “Ah, yes. Lovely little street. Lots of older couple in their retirement. Not many families. Best hurry I suppose.”

Ophelia nodded and made her way quickly upstairs to change into her uniform. The gas stick was hanging on the hook behind her door, bound together with the crook, and six refilled gas sacks re-attached to her belt. She took an oil sack as well, as she was sure a number would be refilling, and a length of lamp wick in case some had burnt itself through. Before leaving, she hefted the waterproof cloak about her, drawing the hood around her face as usual.

It was the blade from her brother's bayonet, altered into a rosewood dagger. It clipped to her hips for safety and for good luck. She had made the suede sheath herself from an oil gasbag that had had a tear in it. Her brother was with her always now, even if only in spirit in the form of the memento. She rushed downstairs, towards the door, bidding her mother farewell.

It had been dark outside all day, almost as if the sun had never completely risen, lost behind a choking blanket of clouds, and all the while Nataniel had remained sequestered in his room, drawing. He had dreamt again last night of Elenor, who had been in a ballroom once more. This time around, it had been a different one, closer to the tower peaked with flame, and less open. The floor had been smaller and square, and there had been no windows, only a massive opening in the ceiling around which people could look down upon the dancers. She had danced with him once more, though this time retreating to the rooftop to dance in private, beneath the stars and above the noise of the chatter below.

For a time, it had been just him and Elenor on the rooftop, and their dance had lasted for an unrecognisable length of time. A number of songs had passed—that had been certain, though time and space seemed to slow while he and Elenor waltzed beneath the sky and the moon. Nataniel had never seen the silver moon in the sky before, let alone the thousands and millions of sparkling stars that dotted the deep blue-black firmament. There never was a night sky in Castore—only the heavy, overcast clouds that brought on the supressing darkness in which the fiends of the Tyndibar Well thrived.

Beneath the sky, Nataniel and Elenor found a bench to seat themselves on, looking out over the city. Many of the lights were extinguished, which was particularly strange for Nataniel to see. He was used to seeing brilliant, flickering lamplight shimmering in the streets. But not tonight, it seemed. Tonight there was darkness and nothing else.

“It is quite sad,” he replied, “but it is nice to see it here.” Even if it was all a dream, it felt real enough. He could feel the wind on his back, blowing about his suit, and the coldness of the air.

“WHAT!?” Nataniel gasped, fighting the urge to swear before the young lady. He did not realise that the Tyndibar Well existed in the world of the faeries. But that was not the most pressing issue at hand at present.

He had emerged from the dream in his bed, sweating and crying. I thought the Architect had ended Tyndibar blessings, was his first thought. His second was him asking himself, Can faeries even get blessed?

But now he sat, locked in his room, obsessing over his last words to the girl. He had reacted so abruptly, so strangely that for now he wanted nothing but to sleep once more and tell her he did not care for her choice. It was clear she was not afraid and so neither should he. Besides, he had been blessed and had so far avoided turning into a nocturnal beast. Who was to say that she would not be the same?

Nataniel did not normally lock the door into his room, but Delilah and Byron both understood that when he was angry or confused or sad, he wanted nothing besides quiet in his room. They knew not to bother him.

He looked out the window, over the flame of the flickering candle, into the rain-soaked streets where the lamps had been extinguished unexpectedly. A LampLighter would shortly come to ignite them once more before night fell. There were still fiends that wandered about Elror Street—five hairy, scaly, toothed beasts, to be exact—drawn into it by the darkness. They would not go near the candles, but neither would the people of the street emerge from their houses or return home from their places of work until the lamps were lit.

As Nataniel stared out of his window onto Elror Street, he sensed the coldness of night begin to converge upon Castore. With every second that passed, the streets would become more and more dangerous, especially as the canals began to rise, and people began to get stranded within the darker areas of Castore. If the rain continued to sheet down so freely, Castore would surely flood, dooming a number of people to bloody deaths at the hands of the street fiends.

Ophelia sparked her gas stick to light as she came to the end of the lamplit lane, checking twice that the gas bags at her waist were properly secured to the tubing that led to the stick. She had already checked the tube for leaks at home by dipping it into a tub of water—once it was submerged, she would allow gas to flow through, and if there were any leaks, bubbles would appear.

In Elror Street before her stalked six nocturnal fiends, slouching about the street as though they owned it, awaiting the time when an unsuspecting citizen would emerge from their house only to be devoured moments later.

It was lit without any trouble. It seemed that the fiends still had not noticed her, so with relative ease, Ophelia climbed the pole, using the metal bars that extended out from both sides of the post, opened the shutter, filled it with oil and ignited the flame within, its light quickly dispersing some of the encircling darkness. It seemed, however, that the newly ignited lamp also caused the fiends to stir, each of them turning to face Ophelia, ears twitching, tongues hissing, teeth bared, lips turned back into a snarling rictus. And beneath the ruffled fur, shining scales or yellowed skin were the tattoo-like marks, swirling and curling across their faces and about their necks.

My job has just become harder, she thought, turning the joiner about the threads on the gas bag to increase the flow of gas so that the flame burned brightly, and held it out in the direction of the fiends. They recoiled slightly, but continued their way towards her, despite the flames. She knew she was safe, though, so long as the fire burned.

With the oil sack in one hand, and the gas stick in the other, she opened up the next lamp and ignited the flame within, nodding to the tongue of golden light as she closed the shutter once more.

Nataniel watched, interested, as the LampLighter, with his hood up, ignited the third lamp in the street, while the fiends moved towards him, stalking down the street, ever closer, but careful of the firelight. He could see in the LampLighter's movements that he was scared, terrified even, his legs jittering beneath the blue cloak. Yet still he had a facade of bravery across his face—or what Nataniel could see of it, at least, for much of it was obscured by the hood.

She was out of the protection of the lamplight now, with only her gas stick for safety. If it burnt itself out now, she only had the light of the previous lamp to run to, which was probably fifteen feet away, while the fiends were nearly close enough to touch her. If it extinguished itself now, she would only last as long as it took for the beasts to realise there was no flame protecting her.

Nataniel sprang into action the moment he saw the fire stick's flame die, leaping from the chair he was kneeling upon and down the stairs into the kitchen. Searching the cupboards madly, he found a bottle of vodka, still half full, and a rag. He unstoppered the vodka on the way to the door and stuffed it with the rag.

Shaking it, he ignited the rag with one of the candles from the windowsill, bursting from his house with a burning bottle of vodka in one hand and a candle in the other.

“Hey!” he called to the beasts, each of the fiends holding a sharp-taloned claw high in preparation for the LampLighter's death. The LampLighter—whose hood had fallen back to reveal that he was in fact a she—had been knocked to the ground, perhaps leapt upon by one of the massive beasts. They all turned to him; the nearest one, a very yellowish humanoid, barking at the boy as he flung the bottle of vodka from his hand. It sailed in the air, the fiends suddenly entranced and terrified by the light, allowing the LampLighter a chance to shuffle backwards through the rain-soaked cobbles towards the warding powers of the previous lamp.

The vodka struck the scaly monster, flames flowing out and over it, as if the fire itself was made of liquid. It screamed, seeming to melt beneath the light of the flames, its scales and face disintegrating. The other monsters tried to escape, but the flames licked upwards, resistant to the pouring rain, consuming their fur and skin and everything beneath it in moments, the light like acid to their muscle. They bled black and violet; ichor the colour of a late twilight, thick as custard, a stink like rotten eggs.

It appeared that the girl's boot had caught alight from a rebel splash of burning vodka, but she had been able to quickly extinguish it by stomping it out with her other foot.

The flames continued to burn and consume, while Nataniel rushed to help the girl up. She was much older than him, perhaps somewhere in her early twenties, with dark hair and pale skin—like everyone in Castore seemed to have. He held out his hand to help her up, and she accepted it, Nataniel groaning as he lifted her up.

She was much taller than him, but then again, it was not hard to do that. Nataniel was a little bit shorter than most. Byron and Delilah once joked about it being because of his Blessing, but as he had grown older, that joke had ended and the seriousness of the matter had become a mute topic. He was growing older, and it would only be a matter of time before he would become Cursed. There was no more joking about that, like they had when he was younger and Cursing seemed forever away.

“Thank you,” she said, as she suddenly noticed her hood was not up. She threw it about her face, obscuring her features once more. As they spoke, the flames from the burning vodka disintegrated, washing away with the oozing blood from the night-fiends.

“Well, Nataniel, thank you for that.” She appeared to be slowly catching her breath, her chest rising up and down. “Now if you don't mind, I really must keep going.” She dusted the front of her clothes off with two sweeps of her hands and then took up her cane and gas-stick once more.

Nataniel did not bother with the broken vodka bottle—the rain would eventually wash that away. He retreated back into his house, where he paused in the doorway, dripping water on the floor, before rushing upstairs to dry himself. He then heard the rain outside become heavier.

Not only had she risked her own life by travelling to the next lamp, but she had almost uncovered her identity all together. The boy Nataniel had seen her face, but he did not know her name, and that was enough for her.

The marking had been black, shaped in swirls and rivulets across his face. But unlike from a distance where the markings looked like tattoos, close up they looked much more like bruises, as though the dark shapes went below the surface of his skin. Not only was he young to be a Blessed—let alone unaffected by the bestial magics that had touched all other Blessed—but he had the brightest eyes, white and clouded, as though he were blind.

He had reacted so quickly, she thought, wondering how much time had passed between her flame extinguishing and the monsters converging. How had he gotten here so fast? She quickly considered the possibilities. Perhaps speed is a part of his Blessing, or maybe he already had the vodka out... She paused, having to fight from laughing at herself. The boy's probably no older than thirteen. What would he be doing with vodka?

She sighed. With any luck, she would never see the boy again, never have to worry about being attacked by fiends, and never have to repay him. He seemed the type of boy—what with the markings and the strange eyes—that one would not like to get entangled with. It would probably lead only to pain or heartbreak.

Poor boy, she mused, as she began to wonder what sort of beast he would become when the Blessing mutated into a Curse, destroying the boy that had once been known as Nataniel.