“Yes,” I said. I couldn’t take my eyes off that little flame. It was one of the most extraordinary things I’d ever seen. “Doesn’t that burn you?”
“Not at all, notatall, notatall,” he shouted. He was too drunk to talk quietly. “Being of one substance with my flesh, you know, it can’t hurt. Litchwight, I mean witchlight, they call it. Not even hot, dear lad. Not even warm. So, well then, out with it, out with it!”
“Out with what?” I said.
“Whatever you need or want, of course. You have to meet three folk in need in this place and give them what help you can before you can get where you’re going. You’re my third,” he shouted, waving his little flame backward and forward more or less under my nose, “so I’m naturally anxious to get you done and dealt with and get on. So out with it. What do you want?”
I should have asked him how to find Romanov. I see that now. A lot of things would have been different if I had. But I was so amazed by that little blue flame that I leaned backward to get its light out of my eyes and pointed to it. “Can I do that? Can you show me how to do it?”
He wavered forward from his rock, peering at me, and nearly fell down. “Amazing,” he said, hastily getting his back to the rock again. “Amazing. You’re here, but you can’t do a simple thing like raising light, or do I mean lazing right? Whichever. You can’t. Why not?”
“No one ever showed me how,” I said.
He swayed about, looking solemn. “I quote,” he said. “I’m very well read in the literature of several worlds, you know, and I quote. ‘What do they teach them in these schools?’ Know where that comes from?”
“One of the Narnia books,” I said. “The one where Narnia begins. Can you show me how to make a light like that?”
“Tell you,” he corrected me, looking even more solemn. “I can’t show you because it comes from inside yourself, see. What you do is find your center—can you do that?”
“My navel, you mean?” I said.
“No, no!” he howled. “You’re not a woman! Or are you? Confess I can’t see you too well, but your voice sounds like teenage male to me. Is that what you are?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And a plumb ignorant one, too,” he grumbled. “Fancy not knowing—Well, your center is here!”
He plunged toward me and took me completely by surprise by jabbing me hard just under my breastbone. What with that, and the blast of alcohol that came with the jab, I went staggering backward into the rocks on the other side of the path. He overbalanced. He snatched at my knees as he went down, missed, and ended in a heap by my feet. The blue light seemed to splash all over the ground. Then it climbed one of his arms and settled on his shiny wet shoulder.
“Polar sexus,” he said sadly. “That’s where it is, polar sexus.”
“Are you hurt?” I asked.
He raised his soaking gray head. “There is,” he said, “a special angel appointed to watch over those under the inkerfluence of eight over the one. That, young man, is why I had to imbibe before coming here. It all hangs together. Now do you understand how to summon light?”
“No,” I said frankly.
“Don’t you even know where your solar plexus is?” he demanded.
“I thought you said polar sexus,” I said.
He went up on to his hands and knees and shook his head sadly. Water flew off as if he was a wet dog. “Now you’re making fun of me. But I shall be forbearing,” he said, “though mostly for the reason that I shan’t get out of this place if I’m not. And I may add, young man, that your attitude toward the elderly is less than respectful. Polar sexus indeed!” He started fumbling around on the ground in front of my feet. “Where is it? Where did I put my damn light?”
“It’s on your shoulder,” I said.
He turned his face and saw it. He more or less put his nose in it. “Now you’re having a joke on me,” he said. “I shall be freezingly polite and ignore it, or we’ll be here all night. Pick me up.”
He smelled so disgustingly of booze that I really didn’t want to touch him, but I did want to know how you made light, so I bent down and grabbed him by his sopping jacket. He didn’t like that. He said, “Unhand me at once!” and crawled away backward.
“You asked me to,” I said. I was getting fed up.
“No, I didn’t,” he retorted. “I was merely seeking a way out of our dilemma by asking you to pick up my witchlight. If you can keep it alight when you have it, you will in fact be making it for yourself. Come on. Take it. It won’t hurt you, and I can easily make more.”
Well, I wondered if he d
id mean this, but I went gently up to him and tried cupping the little flame in my hands. It didn’t feel of anything very much. A bit warm perhaps, but that was all. I stood up holding it, really delighted. Then it began to sink and fizzle.
“No, no! Ignore it,” he cried out. “Think of something else quickly!” He scrambled himself up the rockface and somehow managed to stand up. Then he snapped his fingers and held out another blue flame, balanced on the palm of his withered old hand. “See? Now change the subject.”