Passing the Torch

 Every month, Mother sent me to give little gifts to the Barn Widow, Madge Perrithrop. A few herbs, a newly sewn handkerchief, a small fruit basket. Far as I knew, we were the only ones in the village who ever gave her much of anything, because Madge was the type who never parted with as much as a cup of sugar. Left a bad taste, it did, the way she replied - polite enough, but it was the kind of thanks that didn’t have any thanks behind it.

The gift this time was a bit of tallow, so Madge could make a candle for Passing Tide. I was especially annoyed that day - it was cold, it was rainy, and it was a waste, besides. Every year, she brought her own candle and it never lit, not once. Sure, for some it took time. A couple of years gone by with an unlit wick, you know, it happens. But Madge’s went unlit for… well, for as long as I could remember, which was when my older brother (rest his soul) lit our family’s candle ten years back. 

But mother was firm. “A gift isn’t in the gratitude,” she’d always say. Easy enough for her, I thought, grumbling as the rain turned to sleet, waiting minutes outside to receive the usual curt nod, thankless thanks, and another bone-cold walk home.

That was morning, and the weather didn’t care to let up the whole day through. It never came to ice, but that only meant we could look forward to a miserable mud slog to Cinder Gorge. Been a long time since, and that night remains the quietest Passing Tide sojourn I can remember. Conversation in whispers, only snatches of sentences. Not a song sung. Mother, I saw, was giving an arm to Madge, who grimaced with every arthritic step.

Slow, we made our way along Hinter Pass, the pebbled curbs growing to boulders towering gray as the winter clouds. Wind heaved through the valley in great gusts, and the morning’s rain and sleet never quite quit, cloud spitting weather the whole way through. The entire trek, all told, came to be a soul-brittling hour’s march. But we made it to Cinder Gorge all the same, where the dull valley rocks open to a red chasm, wider than awe can hold. Our town thinks a cataclysmic earthquake rent the range apart. Others say it was split by the fire-god, Xalatian, falling to their first death.

Whatever the case, the gorge always glowed, day and night, a soft red like embers waiting to reignite; and at every winter’s equinox, we would gather and wait for the year’s last light to die. That year, we huddled closer than ever before or since. The gorge’s shine is brilliant, but not warm. It suggests the hearth without being one. Minute by minute, the sun made its retreat beneath the distant cliffs, the air blowing icy as the sky grew darker. And we waited.

It’s always a surprise when it happens. The Pyre, I mean. You never quite know when it will emerge. This year continued to be unusual - unusually cold, unusually quiet, unusually bleak for an unusually long time. There were even mutterings that maybe this year, The Pyre wouldn’t ignite. Blasphemous as it was, we couldn’t blame the doubt, not even Father Braid, stickler that he was. I remember wondering what would happen if The Pyre didn’t come. What would it mean? It came every year, came since before living memory, but if it missed a beat, if Cinder Gorge only smoldered…

My qualm was interrupted. The dim red below glistened, quick flickers like fireflies darting across dark, the spectrum building: first red, then orange, then blue, then - with no warning - a surge of every color bursting skyward! A shimmering veil miles high and miles long dazzling eyes and illuminating the darkest of nights and souls. Winter whipped through the display, but the radiance shone on unperturbed, sheets of translucent colors melting one to the next in vast rainbow folds.

Father Braid began his chant, a signal for the Unvisited to unsheath their candles. Only a few families this year… and Madge. A couple verses recited, rich and deep as well water, and the town joined in, one shivering voice at a time. We like to believe The Pyre spirits are drawn out by the song, though who can say. Father Braid said it wouldn’t be faith if we had a knowing to it. This year, for all the troubles, the spirits came one after another: my buddy Thaler’s father, as grim faced as ever; the Mayor’s cousin, thick and sweet as the pies she made; the cobbler’s little boy Pietyr, hobbling one leg too short… 

They never talked, the spirits. They would approach, look in your eyes for as long as you could stand, and then kind of dissolve, like dandelion seeds in a breeze. Then, somehow or another, you were left with a lit candle which, if you were lucky, might stay lit for a good long while… but it always went out, one way or another. Anyhow, I saw every family gathered around their own Pyre spirit. Grief, yes, but different than a burial, knowing they were being released to the sky. People said their last peace, or stood quiet, or sniffled.

But Madge? She slumped in the back, a most defeated look I have ever seen, candle quivering in hand. I wondered if I shouldn’t console her, but what could I say? It was probably the last year her legs could carry her. She barely made it as it was. Mother, too, I noticed, looked with the same helpless feeling must have been in my eyes. It occurred to me, I didn’t even know who she was waiting for. Madge was so old, I don’t think anybody knew.

But doing nothing was worse than indecent, I thought. So I trudged over and stood there next to her, neither of us looking at the other, and I just stood and stewed. Was worse, I didn’t know who or what to be mad at, only that it weren’t fair. It weren’t fair The Pyre brought everyone but one; it weren’t fair a spirit should stand up family and keep them waiting for years and years; it weren’t fair the gods in their grandiosity couldn’t grant one little old lady, grouch though she be, one last comfort in a miserable life. 

And I just stood and stewed, getting madder and madder. The other spirits disappeared one by one, one candle lighting after another, each one lighting another match in my heart. The Pyre, too, dwindled, the light fading even as my anger grew. By the time the Gorge had returned to Cinders, the wind was lighter and the townsfolk turned homeward, pretending not to look at the shrunken figure of Madge, hunched over her unlit candle. And I couldn’t stand it. I just ran to the edge of the Gorge, kicked up a heap of gravel, and shouted, top of my lungs,

“So is that it, then? That’s all you got?”

Course there was no reply. Just my echo, and Father Braid’s indignant muttering, the rest of the town keeping abashed eyes groundward. Turns out, that was it. That was all it got.

—- —- —-

Madge hung on just a few months longer. Every month, I would bring her a gift (no motherly prompt necessary) and every month, well… she wouldn’t say thank you out loud, anymore, but she’d have a pie for me. They were small, and not very good; but I came to learn, ashamed to say, it was because she couldn’t afford sugar. “Forgive the young their trespasses,” Father Braid would’ve said, much as us kids wished he lived up to his own sermons.

She died in her sleep, and mother and I were two of only four at the funeral, the others being Father Braid and a new acolyte training for the chantry. It’s been a long time, and there’s not been another Passing Tide as miserable as that one. Since then, I’ve always brought a candle for Madge. Even in the year I lost my girl, Sammy, I brought two, just in case. I don’t expect Madge to show, but even if she doesn’t... I don’t know. I just hope she appreciates knowing at least one person is out there, waiting for her just like she did, waiting in the dark for a candle never lit.