Sect Year 4 · fifth month · night of day 2 to dawn of day 3 · the thirty-seventh life: Gannet Point light, her fortieth year
Odda kept the glass clean through the whole of the night. She folded a rag into a square, breathed on the inside of each pane, and wiped it until the flame stood in a clear column with nothing to bend it. Her uncle had done the same every dusk for thirty years. The sea can’t see through a dirty window, he had told her, and a light no ship can see is only a fire on a rock.
The spare burner did not have the reach of his great lamp. It stood in its bracket in the glass, lower and paler, a plain brass cup with a wick that had to be trimmed at every watch. She trimmed it and let the oil go down at the pace he had taught her, a finger’s width below the scratched mark on the pool.
The light burned straight and yellow, and it reached the water. Her right palm was bound in a strip torn from her shirt, and each turn of the wick pulled at the torn skin. She turned it slowly and kept the pain to herself.
