3/ Borrowed Light
In a valley between two hills lies the little town of Betweenhills. On the left stands Falcon Peak, bald on top, with the observatory up on its ridge. On the right stands the Crag, covered in beech trees, with a name much uglier than it deserves. Down in the square there is a stone well, and next to it a bench with a shelter made of boards.
There are two ways up Falcon Peak. The comfortable one goes past the shepherd's hut, and it takes an hour. And then there is the Blind Passage, which takes ten minutes.
The Blind Passage is a crack in the rock, covered by one enormous flat slab of stone. The slab fell there long before people came to the valley, and it has lain there ever since. The passage is narrow, a hundred steps long, and open at both ends. It isn't quite straight. In two places it bends a little — so little that nobody notices. And it is because of those two bends that no light reaches its middle from either end.
In the middle of the Blind Passage it is dark. In the little town they say it has always been dark there.
And there is one more thing in Betweenhills that only children can see.
It is called Spark. Once there was only one of her, and she lived in the air between George and Luna. Then, at the well, she divided, the way a flame divides when you light a second candle from the first. Since then there are as many Sparks in the valley as there are places where two palms are really holding on to each other. George spent four days searching for the one that was theirs, and then he stopped searching. Spark told him: "I'm between you when you really notice each other."
She knows a great deal by now. You only have to tell her a word once and she has it. But some things won't fit into her head, even the fifth time — and they are always the very things that seem perfectly simple to children.
And that autumn, it was the turn of one of those things — and it had to do with light.
2. Spilt Tallow
Ever since that Friday when the wind wheel began to turn on Falcon Peak, more people had been walking through the Blind Passage than before.
The wheel stands up on the ridge, by the bare stone, and it drives the saw down below. The horse no longer has to haul the timber. He stands by the fence and looks up at the wheel that took his job. Nobody dares say whether he is grateful. But a wheel has to be looked after. The axle needs greasing, the pin needs checking, and the sail needs stitching after every windy spell. Mr Barr went up every morning and every evening, and he always carried a pot of tallow. That is the fat that lamps burn, and axles like it too.
Meanwhile the days had grown shorter. In the morning he walked in the dark, and in the evening he walked in the dark, and in the middle of the passage it was dark anyway.
One morning he missed his footing there and slipped.
Nothing dreadful happened. He tore his sleeve, grazed his elbow, and the pot smashed against the stone. The tallow ran out over the ground, in a place where nobody could see it — and neither could he.
Now he had nothing left to take up the hill, so he turned round and went down for more. But new tallow can't be fetched in an hour: Mr Pearson the butcher has to render it first, melting it down from raw fat. By the time Mr Barr had it, two days had passed, and for those two days the axle squeaked across the whole valley. Every afternoon, when the wheel got going, everyone with a window facing Falcon Peak could hear it.
The tallow stayed lying in the dark.
The next day, in that very same place, Mrs Rowan slipped and twisted her ankle. She said nothing to anybody. She only carried pears to her neighbour over the fence more slowly than usual, for three days.
George saw her over the fence. He saw that she put her foot down carefully, and he asked her what had happened. She said it was nothing. He asked again, in a different way. He asked where it had happened. That she answered. In the Blind Passage, in the dark, about halfway along. On something greasy.
And then he did what he always does. He took a bucket of water, a handful of sand and an old rag. On the way he stopped at Luna's and took her along.
Luna didn't go in. She stayed standing at the bottom end of the passage and counted aloud, and for every number George took one step. When he could no longer see, he called out. When, on the far side, he could see again, he called out again.
Spark stayed with Luna, at the edge of the dark. Once George was round the bend, the rock hid her from him, and her light did not reach his hands.
George didn't call her. He knew who needed her more just then.
He scrubbed on his knees for a good hour. Then he went over the whole stretch once more, running his palm along the stone to check.
And he came out with wet knees and with something he had never known before: he didn't know whether he had finished.
There was no way to find out. A hand finds only what it touches. The piece he had missed would be found only by whoever stepped on it.
"It isn't about the tallow," he said that evening. "It's that you can't see in there."
"A hundred steps," he added. "Out of those, the dark is about thirty."
"Thirty-four," said Luna. She had been counting.
3. Nothing Must Burn in That Passage
This time George asked first.
A month earlier he wouldn't have done that. A month earlier he would have reached into his pocket for a coil of wire and gone off to try it by himself. This time he took Luna, and together they went to see Mr Barr at the old sawmill. There he asked whether anything had ever shone in that passage.
"No," said Mr Barr. He said it slowly, the way he says everything. "And I know why. There's a draught in there."
There really was a draught. The passage is open at both ends, and one end is higher than the other, so air is always moving through it. Not wind. Just a quiet, steady draught that you only notice when you light something.
George listened, and in his head he was already building it. Luna listened too and said nothing, because it was all fitting together for him just then. If a draught blows out a flame that stands on the ground, then you hang the flame higher and cover it on one side. It sounded sensible, and on the woodshed doorstep it looked sensible too.
First George drew what he wanted to build. That was something new — ever since the kite had come apart on Falcon Peak, he always drew before he touched the wood. He drew a lantern hanging from a wire, the wire wedged into a crack in the wall, and next to it an arrow showing which way the air went.
They borrowed the lantern from Granny Dora — the very same one that had burned in the square all night, when everything else in Betweenhills went out. Then he built it. He wedged the wire into a crack in the wall, exactly in the middle of the dark stretch, and bent it into a hook, just as in the drawing. Luna held the lantern for him so that he had both hands free, and she shielded it from the draught with her body, because otherwise it wouldn't stay alight for a moment. It took them the whole afternoon.
Then they hung the lantern, lit it and walked away. George counted his steps as he went, because he wanted to know how far away he would still be able to see its light.
On the thirteenth step, it went out.
In the square, you see, there is no draught. In the passage there is.
He went back, lit it again and covered it on one side with a piece of tin that he had cut from the old bucket in the woodshed. The lantern burned, and it lit up the tin. Nothing else.
Granny Dora's lantern has no glass. Glass isn't made in the valley, and nobody had ever brought any here for a lantern. The flame is protected only by four tin walls with small openings in them, blackened with soot along the top edge, and at first George thought that was enough.
But those openings aren't there to shut the flame in. They're there so that it can breathe. Air goes in through some of them and smoke goes out through others. In the square that is enough. But in the passage, where the air moves all the time and in one direction, the air goes straight in through the openings to the flame.
He tried a flaming torch. The torch burned bravely and you could see by it, but in the narrow passage the smoke had nowhere to go. George came out of it with eyes as red as a rabbit's, and he coughed until supper. Luna was waiting for him at the end of the passage. About how he looked, she said nothing. She only smiled and turned sideways so that he wouldn't see.
And there was one more thing, which Luna had noticed, and which was worse than the smoke.
"Even if it burned," she said, "somebody has to hold it. And people carry things through there. They haven't got a free hand."
They sat on the woodshed doorstep and were both silent for a long time. Then George said what needed to be said, even though it was hard for him to say, because he liked fire.
"So nothing must burn in that passage."
Above them, Spark shone at full brightness, although neither of them was speaking.
4. The Patch on Mr Pearson's Wall
The idea came in the square. It came exactly the way ideas come: only to someone who has been thinking hard about the matter for a long time.
It was midday. Mr Pearson the butcher had an old tin sign over his door, on which there had been nothing to read for years. At that time of year the sun travelled low. It reached the sign and threw a white patch, the size of a plate, onto the wall opposite.
George was standing right under that patch and couldn't see it.
Luna, who was twenty steps further off and tripped over the kerb just then, saw it at once.
"George."
"What?"
"The wall is shining behind you."
George turned round. He looked at the patch for a long time. Then he looked at the sign over Mr Pearson's door, then at the sun, then at the wall again. Luna kept quiet and let him, because she knew it was all fitting together for him just then.
"It isn't burning," he said at last.
"No."
"And nobody is holding it."
"No."
Mr Pearson came out of his door and laughed. He laughed first, as he always did, and only then asked what the joke was.
"You're standing opposite my door," he said.
"It's because of that sign of yours," said George.
Mr Pearson looked up at the sign. Then at the white patch on the wall opposite. Then at the sign again. It took him a while, but you could see on his face exactly the moment when it clicked.
"This one's been doing that ever since I've had it," he said slowly. "I thought every bit of tin did that."
"They don't," said Luna. "Only a polished one."
Mr Pearson wiped that sign with a scrap of sacking every Friday. Not so that it would shine. Because he didn't like having something dusty over his door.
"So every Friday I've been polishing light," he said, "and I never even knew it."
And he laughed at that too — this time only after he had understood it.
Then he asked what they needed it for. George told him all of it, from the spilt tallow to the lantern that went out, and he didn't leave out the torch.
Mr Pearson lent them the sign. He said it was in his way anyway, which wasn't quite true, but it was nice of him.
5. Borrowed Light
It took them three days to build. And out of each day, only one hour around midday was theirs. Until then the sun stands behind Falcon Peak, and afterwards it stands behind the Crag, so it can see into the bottom end of the passage only for that short while in between. Before that, they waited. After it, there was no point in trying anything.
The first day belonged to the sign. George polished it with ash, because ash is as fine as flour and leaves tin smooth. Granny Dora had told him so once — that candlesticks have always been polished like this, and that anyone who has ever polished anything knows it. Then they set the sign up at the bottom end of the passage on three stones, so that it could be turned, and they turned it in small steps until the sun went behind the Crag. The light went in and stopped at the first bend.
On the second day, a piece of tin went up at the first bend. It was the tin from the old bucket — the same piece with which George had covered the lantern in vain. Now at last it was good for something. The light bounced off it, went round the bend, spread out across the ceiling there and was lost.
"We have to scatter it at the end," said Luna. "Not send it on."
So on the third day, at the second bend, they put not tin but a board painted with whitewash. Mrs Rowan gave it to them, and it used to be the door of a henhouse.
The sign caught the midday sun and sent it to the bucket tin at the first bend. The bucket tin sent it on to the white board at the second bend. And the white board didn't throw it any further as a sharp beam. It spread it out — softly, evenly, without edges — over the whole middle of the Blind Passage.
George and Luna stood in the middle of the passage and could see their hands.
The light there was pale. You couldn't read by it, and you couldn't warm anything with it. But there was exactly as much of it as a person needs to see where they are stepping.
And it wasn't burning. And nobody was holding it.
Spark flew into the middle of that pale light and stayed hanging there.
"Where is it from?" she asked.
"From outside," said George.
"But it's here."
"It's here, but it isn't from here."
Spark went dark for a moment and then lit up again, which in her meant that she was thinking. "So is it here, then, or there?"
"Both here and there," said Luna. "We've only borrowed that light."
And Spark couldn't get it into her head. Not because she was stupid. In those few weeks she had learned so many things that they wouldn't have fitted into George's notebook. But simple things always gave her the biggest trouble, and this was a simple thing.
They came out of the passage only after the light had left it — and it left before they did.
In the evening they sat in front of the woodshed, and over the Crag stood the moon, almost full.
"That's borrowed too," said Luna. "The moon doesn't shine. It only gives back what the sun gives it."
Spark looked up for a long time.
"And does the moon know that?"
Luna opened her mouth and shut it again, because there was no answering that.
"My great-grandmother liked it better than the stars," she said after a while. "Matilda. She died long before I came along. I never could ask her why."
Spark said nothing to that, and that was good of her.
6. Four Parts of One Story
Within three days, the whole little town knew about the white patch in the passage.
And then something showed itself that nobody had expected. It came out that nobody had the whole story of the Blind Passage. Everyone had a piece of the truth, every piece said something different, and every one of those people was sure of their own piece.
Granny Dora said that when she was a girl, slanting light used to come into the middle of the passage at midday. It came from above, crossed the whole width of the passage and ended on the wall as a patch of light. The children used to hold their palms in that patch, apparently. It was exactly high enough in those days for a child to reach, and it was a sort of children's game: who touches it first, and on whose hand it stays the longest.
Mr Sparrow the baker said that wasn't so. All his life he had walked that way for wood for his oven, and in the middle of the passage he had never, ever seen anything. And Mr Sparrow is not a man who makes things up.
Mr Jacobs the bell-ringer said that in the middle it dripped. That as a boy he always had a wet collar there, and that he remembered it because in winter it was unpleasant.
And Mrs Rowan said that when she was little she had once seen a man kneeling on top of the slab. He had a bucket beside him and was doing something with his hands. She had thought at the time that he was gathering something.
In the square, everyone started talking about it at once. Mr Pearson laughed, Mr Sparrow shook his head, Mr Jacobs kept repeating the thing about his collar, and Granny Dora sat down on the bench under the painted sea, because her leg hurt.
Above them, Spark faded to a trembling little line, as thin as a hair.
George saw it, and he got angry. "Three of them must be wrong."
"Which three?" asked Luna.
"I don't know. Some of them."
"There are four of them," said Luna. "So show me the three we won't believe."
George looked at Granny Dora, who had been giving him the first slice of bread since he was little. At Mr Sparrow, whose oven had not gone cold once in his whole life. At Mr Jacobs, who rings the bell at five even with a swollen foot. At Mrs Rowan, who carried pears to her neighbour over the fence and never waited to be thanked.
He pointed at no one.
So they did it differently, and it took them the whole day.
They went to each of the four separately. Not to the square, where everyone talks at once, but to each person's home, where only one person talks. George opened the notebook EXPERIMENTS WITH SPARK at a clean page and wrote at the top: WHO SAW WHAT IN THE PASSAGE. Luna asked the questions and he wrote.
When Luna had finished telling him what she had heard, he put down his pencil. For him, that is the same as putting down a hammer.
By evening they had four lines, one under another, and they looked at them by candlelight.
Granny Dora — slanting light, a patch on the wall. When she was a girl.
Mr Jacobs — dripping. When he was a boy.
Mrs Rowan — a man on the slab with a bucket. When she was little.
Mr Sparrow — never anything. His whole life.
And then Luna saw it. Four lines one under another look quite different from four voices at once in the square.
"They aren't talking about the same passage. They're talking about the same passage at different times."
Granny Dora and Mr Jacobs are almost the same age. They were children at the same time and walked through the same passage. Mrs Rowan is much younger. And Mr Sparrow is the youngest of the four.
None of them was lying. Light and water came through the same hole, and they came at the same time. Granny Dora remembers the light, because she looked at it. Mr Jacobs remembers the water, because it ran down his collar. These aren't two passages. They are two people who looked in different places in the same passage.
Then a man with a bucket came onto the slab. Mrs Rowan saw him when she was little.
And after that there was neither light nor water. Mr Sparrow was born into a passage like that.
"These aren't four stories," said Luna. "It's one story, and four parts of it."
Spark lit up so brightly that you could see into the corners of the room.
Below the line
What Is Hidden in This Story
This is for you, the one who is reading. Let us remind ourselves what happened in the story and what it can tell us.
What isn't ours can still help others. Spark looked at the moon and wondered at a light that didn't belong to the moon. The moon only reflected sunlight, and yet it made the night easier to see in. Knowledge is a little like that: we don't have to invent an idea ourselves to understand it and to explain it to another person. We can learn it from somebody who also learned it from others.
Even carefully done work needs checking. George scrubbed the tallow for a long time. But with his hand he found only the places he touched, and in the dark he couldn't tell whether he had missed something. His effort made sense, but it wasn't enough to check the result. When something important about a thing is missing for us, we may not notice a mistake. That is why we ask, observe and try things out. That way we can learn even while we work.
When people speak differently about the same thing, none of them need be wrong. Granny Dora remembered the light. Mr Jacobs remembered the water. They were children at the same time and walked through the same passage, but they noticed different things. Mrs Rowan saw a man with a bucket, and Mr Sparrow already knew the passage without any light. Their experiences did not rule one another out. When the children found out who had experienced what, and when, they understood far more than they could from any single account.
When there are many witnesses, we can't just dismiss them all. George said, "Three of them must be wrong." Luna asked which ones. And he pointed at nobody. It would have been easier to pick one answer and stop listening to the others. But easier doesn't mean truer. Each of them knew something the others didn't. That is why it made sense to hear them all and compare what they had experienced. And even if someone had made a mistake, that wouldn't mean they were lying: a person can say something untrue without meaning to deceive anybody.
Juraj Tušš
