I.

Each day in the Hall of Lights may be divided into four hours. The days are identical, or seem so.

Hour one. Before daybreak, the limner emerges from her alcove. She dips her brass candlelighter into the eternal brazier that burns in one corner, then moves among the rows of candles, lighting each one.

Perhaps the limner has counted the candles. Perhaps she has not. An onlooker might describe their number as “unreasonable.” The Hall of Lights is larger than any king’s hall, and its candles, tall white pillars, form columns and rows across the rosy marble floor.

The limner accomplishes her monumental task with swift, practiced movements. Afterward, she retreats to her alcove for a meal—bread with butter and plum jam, several cups of strong tea.

Hour two. The limner sits among the candles and contemplates the flickering lines of light, which are time and the world.

Hour three. The limner extinguishes the candles. This is a lengthy task, as she pauses to trim wicks and scrape wax from the marble floor.

Hour four. The limner adds oil to the eternal brazier. In her alcove, she lights candles with a tinderbox and eats her second meal of the day, this time enjoying dried fish and, sometimes, a salad of wild greens.

After come the small tasks of life. When these are complete, the candles are put out, the window unshuttered. Outside, a nightjar calls. The stars are kindling one by one.

II. 

An ill wind is coming, the carter tells the limner.

Every few weeks, the carter brings provisions and candles. For months, he’s seemed tired, nervous, but when he mentions the wind, the limner thinks he’s talking about the weather. They’ve only ever exchanged small talk.

The next delivery day comes and goes. No carter. No one, in fact, has passed on the road, not for weeks. 

The limner is dismayed, for the time of rest is nearly here. While kings and commoners share feasts by candlelight, the limner works steadily in darkness: she gathers wax stubs, scrubs the marble, lays out rows of new candles. 

But there are no new candles.

One sleepless night, the limner lights a candle and enters the workroom beside the alcove. Here are molds and pots and blocks of mouse-nibbled beeswax from days when other hands labored in this hall.

The limner tries to make a candle. It goes badly. The ceramic stove smokes; the beeswax sets too quickly and cracks. The wick, which she braided from old rope, won’t burn. 

The next night, she repeats the attempt. Soon she learns to judge the correct temperature for wax and discovers that thread from her trousers makes the best wick. After a week, she has made twenty-three serviceable, if misshapen, yellow candles.

She falls asleep on the floor of the workroom. When she wakes, all the birds have fallen silent. The stars still blaze.

III.

Eleven weeks after the ill wind, a stranger arrives.

The limner is sadly accustomed to strangers. They come with retinues to pray in the chapel beside the hall. Their horses eat the wild dock the limner picks for her salads.

The stranger does not have a horse, though she does wear shoes of berry red leather and a garnet finger-ring. The limner opens her mouth in greeting, but the stranger has already swept past her. She looks grim, and rather dirty for someone in such fine apparel.

The stranger walks the length of the hall, where ninety-seven guttering yellow candles now burn. She peers into the alcove, the workshop, the privy.

Reluctantly, the limner returns to her contemplation.

After she extinguishes the hall and the day flickers out, she enters the workshop. The stranger is here, making coil candles from discarded bits of white wax.

The limner kneels to watch the stranger twist warm beeswax around a wick. It’s a clever design, wide as a pillar candle but quicker to make.

The limner pretends she hasn’t noticed the faint glow of the stranger’s face and hands, the only light in that darkened room.

IV.

The stranger makes candles for a week, then wanders off. She returns some days later, muddy and cheerful, pulling a handcart with sacks of flour and four skeps of honeybees, which soon buzz beneath a linden tree.

The limner resumes teaching the stranger to observe the hours. They kindle candles and contemplate the light. They share fish and bread and tea.

The stranger’s hands are scarred, and she sleeps fitfully on her mat in the alcove. The limner never gives voice to her thoughts—princess, queen, empress. Only royals glow with their own light.

Once the stranger knows the rituals of the hall, the limner, guilty and daring, does what her companion has been urging for weeks. She leaves the stranger to contemplation and takes a walk.

Past the wild dock and the linden trees, a brook tumbles out of the wood. Here, the illuminated world is cool and still. A weak, yellow-pale light flickers through branches. No birds sing.

An ill wind has come. The limner strains to imagine disaster. All she sees is an empty road and scars on a stranger’s hands.

When she returns, the stranger smiles at her from the center of the candlelit hall. The smile seems to say, Back so soon?

The limner crosses the hall to kneel beside her. It’s not that she wasn’t tempted to wander further. Now that the stranger has learned the ways of the hall, it occurs to the limner that she could leave, and discover what’s left of this fading world.

But the ones who light the stars haven’t abandoned their posts, the limner thinks. How can I? 

Later, after they’ve extinguished the world’s light, they go out into the night air, leaning together against the cold. The stars burn brightly, though the stranger’s own silver-gold corona has dimmed. 

The stranger drops her gaze from the light. “I sometimes wonder,” she says, “if you can ever forgive me.”

The limner, with the wisdom of silence, only squeezes her hand.