Deviation Actions
Literature Text
He had to wait until the sun set, until the marsh-lights were lit and the nighttime insects began to chirp softly to begin his day’s work. Once the table had been cleared and his sisters put to bed, Malon held a match to the stub of a candle in his lantern and shuttered it carefully. Kissing his father on the cheek, he slipped into his old marsh boots and closed the front door behind him. Down the raised stone path, he could see a few others stepping out of their houses, backs bowed under burdens of extra lanterns, nets, and provisions for the long night ahead.
With his old boots clacking on the stones, he joined the line of men and women, perhaps two dozen in all, heading towards the center of town. They paused for a few moments by the fire burning there in the square, as though to absorb some lingering warmth for the night. From there, they each followed a different path leading towards the marshes beyond the edge of town. The stones, worn smooth by years of these same feet following these same paths, were slick with moss and peat around the edges where the water occasionally lapped after a heavy rain. Malon unshuttered his lantern enough to let a beam of light escape and illuminate the stones directly in front of him. People had been known to slip off these paths and sink beneath the reeds, and were never seen again.
With a cursory glance at the sky above, Malon smiled to himself. It would be a fine night for catching.
When the stones beneath his feet grew rougher and cracked, and the reeds began to encroach on the path, he stopped and set down his gear. He unstrapped the long mahogany pole from his back, set the brass canteen of hot tea by the lantern, and settled himself down on the driest part of the stone that he could find. He groped in his pack until his fingers met the smooth silky fibers of the spherical net, and he screwed it into the end of his catcher’s pole. Once he had lined up a dozen silvery vials in front of his knees, he took a deep breath and blew out his lantern. He needed darkness for this.
Malon turned his face to the sky, admiring the broad swathe of stars scattered above. He closed his eyes and let himself relax, beginning with his shoulders and moving through the wiry muscles of his body, until his grip loosened around the worn handle of the pole. The air was cold around him as the chill of the late autumn night set in. At first all he could hear was the wind rustling in the reeds, the chirping and fluttering of the marsh insects, and the soft slosh of some nocturnal animal moving somewhere to his left. But then the sounds of the world near him faded, the sting of the cold was forgotten, and all he could hear was the stars.
His youngest sister had once asked him how the stars sounded. He had told her that it was like the whisper of a thousand silver needles over the skin of the sky, and she had smiled and clapped her fat little hands. It was not quite a sound, though. It was a sense, somewhere between touch and taste and hearing, that only awoke at night under the blanket of stars scattered above the dark water of the world. The stars manifested themselves under his skin, so that despite the long, cold nights and the physically demanding work, he needed to return each evening to his perch on the damp stone to witness their song.
Like feathers at the furthest limits of his senses, he began to feel them. When his chest felt tight with their power and the tips of his fingers grew numb with the icy vibrations emanating from the sky, he opened his eyes.
The starlight burst in front of him, swirling in his gaze like drunken fireflies. Flashes of pale blue and gold danced across the sky, blinding him and leaving him bereft once they faded. Unblinking, he gathered up his catcher’s pole and lifted it in front of him. With eyes as wide as possible, he let his grip go slack around the end of the pole, and the finely woven silver of the net began to grow bright in the light of the dancing stars. The net began to move, but not in any earthly breeze. The gravity of the stars took the net and drew it about, following the lazy swirling of the stars, until one, brighter than the rest, drew the strands forward and imbued them with light. Malon, borne by the power trapped before him, rose to his feet. With arms straining, he began to draw the pole in closer to his body. The blindingly brilliant white light drew tears from his eyes, but he didn’t close them. This was crucial.
He groped blindly for one of the vials he had set up at his feet, and brought it quickly up to the end of the pole where the brilliant light of the star glowed white-hot, captured between the threads of his net. With a slow gust of air from his lungs, more like an outpouring of the soul than a breath, he blew the light into the silver flask. He blew until the last fragments of the starlight were pooled in the vial and the net was once again dark and heavy in his hand. He stoppered the vial with dark glass, and set it in his pack. Only then did he allow his eyes to fall closed for a moment’s respite. Then he opened them, refocused on the orbs of ethereal light winking and swirling out of reach, and began again.
When all of his vials were filled, it was nearing dawn, and the stars appeared further; their movements slower and their power dimmer. With a sigh, Malon allowed the voices of the stars to quiet in his ears, and when he looked up again, they were once again only tiny pinpricks of light against the inky pre-dawn sky. With the faint glow of the horizon at his back, he gathered his materials, hunched his back, and shouldered his pack for the walk back home. Later, after he slept, he would sell his bottled starlight to the town trader, who would sell it to townspeople or visiting merchants, as he saw fit. Each night, though, Malon kept one vial for his family, for the winter nights when the darkness came down from the North, and not even the great beacon-fire at the center of the village could be lit to combat it. It was during those nights, Malon mused as he trudged back through the reeds, that the hard work of catching was worth it. It was on those nights that nothing but starlight could banish the darkness.
