The sun set. The air chilled. The birds settled into the trees. It was quiet and calm in the part of Dank that held Ham and Hal.
During his visit to Drear, Ham had realized that he had no fire, nor any way to make one. At home, in Dusk, there were fire tenders and smokehouse tenders and others, whose responsibility was to make and tend fires. Ham had never had to worry about it. His worries were about making sure they had enough wood to burn in the fires and to make charcoal. So while he was in Drear, Ham had sought out the fire tender and asked him how to make and tend fires.
The fire tender had shrunk away from Ham in fear and confusion. In Drear, as in the rest of Dank, Huddlers didn’t seek to learn others’ skills. You learned the skills of your mother or father, and you practiced those skills all your life, and you taught them to your children, and so it went. Ham learned two new skills that day: the skill of fire tending, and the skill of gentle persuasion. It took Ham two hours to get the fire tender to show him how to use two special types of rocks to strike a spark. It took him another hour to get the fire tender to show and explain about dry wood shavings for tinder, and building a fire slowly. When Ham and Hal had left Drear, Ham carried in his carry pack one of each of the special types of rocks, and a small batch of dry wood shavings (even though he knew, now, how to make more).
As the evening chilled and stilled, Ham and Hal moved off the barely visible, barely defined path they were following. They found a small clearing within a ring of huddled trees. They gathered some stones and laid them out in a circle.
Hal helped, cocking his head first to the left, and then to the right, with each new task. As had been true with Ham, Hal had never learned to make or tend fire, nor even wondered how.
They gathered some dry fallen branches (sadly, many of the branches, falling from the dry hopeless trees, were indeed dry), and laid them out next to the ring of stones. Then Ham pulled out his special rocks and his wood shavings. He carefully placed a small pile of the smallest and driest of the wood shavings in the middle of the ring of stones. Hal watched, cocking his head left, then right.
Ham took the two special stones, leaned close to the wood shavings, and struck the stones together. There was a small “click” and a small spark and then quiet and almost-darkness. Ham tried again, and a larger spark sprung from the stones to the wood shavings. Ham leaned close and took a deep breath, puffed out his cheeks, and let a small whoo of air out from between his lips. The spark made more sparks, the sparks spread gently into the shavings, and soon there was the smallest flame dancing on the wood shavings. Ham took some of the smallest of the sticks they’d gathered, and gently fed them into the little flame until they, too, caught some of the flame and began to burn.
Finally, there was a fire dancing for joy in their circle of stones.
Hal looked over at Ham, cocked his head to the left (yes, only to the left), and said, “Ham? Never saw a carry pack before. You made one.”
“Yup, I guess I did.”
“And never saw a water bag for carrying water before. You made one.”
“I suppose that’s true, too, Hal.”
“Woodworkers make wooden tools and stuff, but you aren’t a woodworker and you made walking sticks.”
“Yup.”
“And now you made fire.”
“Yup.”
“Why?”
Of all the things that Ham had going through his head, the question “Why?” hadn’t been there. He was thinking about his dream of the Lightbringer. He was thinking about how Hal was changing. He was thinking about how he’d left his village and found another and about Hal and why he was coming along and… Not the question “Why?”
“Y’know, Hal, I don’t really know. How ‘bout if I sleep on it and give it some thought, and tell you what I think in the morning?”
Hal cocked his head to the right, finishing the movement at last, and said “’kay.”
