Sect Year 1 · tenth month · night of day 1 · the fifteenth life: the post at Ninefold Pass, his sixty-fourth year
Berin had lit the post at every dusk for eleven years, and he was twenty. He climbed the last stair with the tin under one arm and the tinder box in his fist. He didn’t hurry. The wind on the top step took a boy’s breath if he went at it too fast. He had learned that in the first winter, when he came up at a run and sat on the stone unable to speak for as long as it takes tea to steep.
The iron post stood where it had always stood, above the relay hut, with its bracket thrust out at the top like a bent elbow. The bracket was cracked at the bolt on the north side. He had learned to set his weight away from that side.
He knelt and filled the lamp. The fat was cold and sat in a yellow lump on the spoon, so he carried the tin inside his coat on the climb, where it would warm and run. He trimmed the wick short, because a long wick smoked the glass. Then he struck the box and cupped the first spark against the wind until the wick took. The light came out through the lantern in a broken fan and fell away down the switchbacks, bend after bend, toward the valley. Down there he could see nothing but…
