Chapter 4: The Things That Hold
On the morning Shin decided to make fire, his father was losing an argument with a goose.
The argument had begun in the lane and moved into their yard. Now the goose stood between Vin and the gate with its neck extended, hissing at a man who carried a sword for a living.
"Go around," Shin advised from the kitchen step.
"An excellent suggestion. Unfortunately, it has considered that."
Vin moved left. The goose moved left.
Shin laughed so hard that he had to sit down.
He was four now, old enough to fasten the large buttons on his coat and young enough to believe that being four should qualify him for most other things. He had recently learned to count the steps to Meret's house, although the number changed depending on how far he jumped.
The goose lunged. Vin surrendered half the bread in his hand.
"You let it win," Shin said.
"I secured an agreement."
"It got your breakfast."
"There were concessions."
Ren appeared behind Shin, carrying his other shoe.
"The woman at the corner wants her goose back."
"Then she has my full support."
Ren scattered a handful of oats beyond the gate. The goose abandoned negotiations and followed them into the lane.
Vin watched it go.
"A temporary alliance," he told Shin. "Never trust it."
Shin lifted his foot so his mother could put on the shoe. He had done the first one himself, which seemed enough work for the morning.
"Both feet," she said, reading his expression.
He sighed and bent over the fastening.
Inside the kitchen, the hearth had burned low. Vin knelt before it, set two pieces of kindling across the coals, and held a finger beneath a curled shaving of wood.
A small flame appeared.
Shin forgot his shoe.
He had seen his father do it before, but usually from too far away, or while someone was putting a sleeve over his head. This time he watched closely. Vin's finger did not touch the shaving. The flame trembled in the space between them, blue at its base and gold at its tip.
The wood caught. Vin withdrew his hand, and ordinary fire climbed into the kindling.
Shin held out his own finger.
Nothing happened.
He tried his other hand.
"You'll strain something," Vin said.
Shin looked up. "What?"
"Your face."
Ren laughed into her cup.
Shin put his hand behind his back. "I wasn't doing it."
"Then you were doing a very good impression."
Vin closed the hearth guard and sat beside him on the step.
"Your channels aren't ready yet."
"When?"
"When you're older."
"I'm older."
"Older than yesterday. Yes."
"Then tomorrow."
His father considered him with a seriousness Shin appreciated.
"It's going to take quite a few tomorrows."
Shin looked at the flame behind the guard. "Can you make them go quicker?"
"Your mother has asked me that about laundry days. So far, no."
The trouble with grown people was that they gave you something else to do whenever you asked a useful question.
Vin brought a bundle of thin wooden strips from the shed and put them on the table. Ren laid out scraps of sailcloth. By the time Shin realized he had been distracted, he had been made responsible for six pieces of string.
"Not those scissors," Ren said.
He withdrew his hand.
"Those ones."
She gave him the small blunt pair. They were painted red and cut less well than he felt was fair.
In three days, people would hang turning lanterns along the lower canal for Riverlighting. Tavi, who lived above the baker's with his mother, had already made one with five paper fish. Shin had seen it through the bakery window. It was much bigger than the lantern his parents had described.
"Ours needs six birds," he said.
Vin held up a strip of wood. "Where will they sit?"
"Around it."
"All six?"
"Tavi has five."
"That sounds like his problem."
Ren moved the cloth toward Shin. "Choose the wings."
There were yellow pieces from a river pilot's pennant, a strip of deep blue, and a square of white so fine that he could see the table through it. He picked blue for the body and yellow for the wings.
Then he found a small red triangle at the bottom.
He kept it beneath his palm without knowing why.
They worked through the morning. Vin bent the wooden strips into hoops after warming them over steam. Ren sewed the covering while Shin cut lengths of thread, several of which survived at useful lengths.
It was to be a turning lantern, his father explained. Warm air would rise through the center and push against little slanted vanes. The birds would circle above the light.
Shin listened until he understood that something was going to move. Then he began asking when.
At last Vin fitted the top piece onto its pin and gave it a gentle turn.
Three blue birds circled the table.
"There are only three."
"A compact flock," Vin said.
"Tavi has five."
"Then his will need more breakfast."
Shin pushed a bird with his finger. It went around, wobbled, and stopped with its beak against a wooden upright.
He pushed harder.
"Gently," Ren said.
The bird bent.
Shin let go. Its yellow wing hung crookedly.
No one spoke for a moment.
"It was stuck," he said.
Vin brought the frame closer. "I see."
"I only pushed it."
"I saw that too."
Shin watched his father straighten the upright. He waited for the instruction to move away from the table.
Instead, Vin put the little frame in front of him.
"Tell me where it catches."
Shin pointed.
"Good. Hold this while I move that."
Together they eased the wooden strip outward. Ren folded the damaged wing back along its seam and added two small stitches. When Shin pushed the bird again, it made a complete circuit.
He watched it finish another.
"Will it stay?"
"The stitches?" Ren asked.
He nodded.
"If you stop testing them by pulling."
He put both hands flat on the table.
After lunch, Vin went to the yard. Ren took the finished cloth panels upstairs to press beneath a board, leaving the lantern's wooden frame on the kitchen table.
Shin sat on the floor with a wooden horse that had only three legs.
He looked at the hearth.
The guard was fastened. He knew better than to touch it. Once, when he was smaller, he had touched the kettle stand and discovered that things did not have to look angry to hurt.
But the kitchen candle stood on the table. His mother had used it to seal the cut ends of a cord. It was still burning.
He looked toward the stairs.
Then he climbed onto the chair.
He did not intend to make fire now. Only to see how it moved. His father had made it look so easy, and everyone would be pleased if he understood before Tavi did.
The flame leaned when he blew.
He tried again, more carefully. It leaned farther, then straightened.
That was air. His mother did air.
He held his hand beside the candle, making the same shape she made when she lifted a piece of cloth. Nothing happened. He took a deeper breath and blew once more.
The flame went out.
For a moment, he was delighted.
Then he looked at the black wick.
It would have to be lit again before his mother came down.
He pointed at it.
Nothing.
He squeezed his eyes shut and tried harder.
Still nothing.
The hearth had fire in it.
Shin climbed down from the chair.
He stopped in front of the guard. The latch was high, but not as high as it had once been. He could reach it if he stood on his toes.
He lifted one hand.
"Shin."
He turned so quickly that his heel struck the guard.
Ren stood on the bottom stair.
Her voice had not been loud. That made it worse.
"Come here."
He went, looking at the floor.
She knelt and checked his hands, turning them over. Then she looked behind him at the candle.
"Tell me."
"It stopped."
"The candle?"
He nodded.
"And you were going to open the hearth?"
He could feel tears gathering. It annoyed him that they always arrived before he was ready to explain.
"I was fixing it."
Ren sat back on her heels.
For a little while, she said nothing. Shin watched a loose thread on her sleeve.
"The candle can stay out," she said at last.
"But you need it."
"Then I'll light it."
"I made it stop."
"Yes."
He looked up.
"You can tell me that," she said. "You don't have to put it right before you tell me."
She drew him closer. He resisted for half a breath, then put his face against her shoulder.
From there, the kitchen looked smaller. The hearth was only a dark square across the room. He could not understand why he had wanted so badly to reach it.
"No climbing near the candle," she said into his hair. "And no opening the guard. Even if something needs fixing."
He nodded against her.
"Tell me you heard."
"I heard."
Vin came home with rain in his hair and a paper packet tucked inside his coat.
Shin met him at the door before Ren could.
"I didn't open it."
His father stopped unfastening his coat.
"I'm going to need a little more."
Shin told him about the candle. The explanation took some time and returned twice to the fact that he had not opened the guard.
Vin listened. When Shin finished, he glanced at Ren.
"Good that you told me."
"Are you cross?"
"I'm glad your hands aren't burned."
Shin looked down at them.
Vin crouched and took one gently. His own palm was rough, with a smooth patch near the base of his thumb where the skin had healed differently.
"Fire can hurt me too," he said.
"But it's yours."
"It doesn't remember that once the wood catches."
Shin touched the smooth patch with one finger.
"Did you cry?"
Vin's mouth twitched.
"I said things I'm not allowed to teach you yet."
Behind them, Ren set another place at the table.
The packet contained a little glass cup and a disk of pale stone fitted into a metal base. Vin set it inside the lantern. He turned a small collar, and warm amber light filled the glass.
Shin leaned close, then remembered the candle and drew back.
"No flame," Vin said. "But it still gets warm."
The top began to move.
Slowly, the three blue birds circled the light.
Shin watched them go around four times before asking where the fire was hiding.
"There isn't any," Ren said. "The stone was charged at the lampworks."
"Can it do it forever?"
"Until the charge runs out."
"Then we put more in?"
"Someone who knows how does."
He considered that distinction, then decided to let it pass. The birds were turning on their own. This was a better result than he had expected from the morning.
One had a slightly crooked yellow wing.
It stayed on.
Before bed, Ren found him sitting beside the lantern with a piece of chalk.
He had drawn three long marks on his slate. Above them was a square, and beside the square a smaller shape he had rubbed away so often that the slate was pale with dust.
"Is that our house?" she asked.
Shin shook his head.
"The loft?"
Another shake.
She sat beside him.
He had dreams sometimes that left him looking for things in the wrong rooms. Once he had cried because she could not find a black box with a handle. Another time he had insisted there should be a door beside the upstairs window, then become upset when she asked where it went.
Ilen had said children made strange arrangements of the world while they slept.
Ren tried to remember that when he looked so disappointed with the one he woke into.
"Would you like to tell me?"
He rubbed the small shape again.
"It won't come right."
"We could try tomorrow."
He pressed the chalk into her hand.
"You do it."
She looked at the slate, then at him.
"You'll have to show me how."
He lifted three fingers. Studied them. Slowly put them down.
"I don't know."
Ren set the chalk beside the slate.
"Then we'll keep this one."
He watched her place it on the shelf, beyond the cloth she used to wipe his other drawings clean.
"You won't wash it?"
"No."
Only then did he let her take him upstairs.