'The Nighthawk's Candle' - Part I

Okay, so this is my newest short story. I have written more than just part one, but part one is all you're getting today, because I want to polish part two a bit. And part one isn't very long, it's more a foreword than anything, but I hope you forgive me for that.

And hopefully this story isn't too confusing . . . It's been following me around, nipping at my ankles, for about a month, so the other day I finally decided to try and write it down, and it accepted eagerly and swiftly filled about four pages in record time. Yay!

(About the illustrations: I decided to go with a less realistic style for the illustrations: strong colors, clean lines, a bit more cartoony than is my wont. I think it works with the rather strange story, anyway. And yes, those are two children. All illustrations save one are done with black pen and colored pencils. On the pages of a very small sketchbook. So this is about the size of an index card. Done while I should have been studying, shame on me . . .)

The Nighthawk's Candle

I.

There was no Nighthawk, and no candle, but it was called the Nighthawk’s Candle all the same. It was a light in the woods, and had been there as long as anyone’s grandfather could remember. On sunny, bright days it was pale and yellow like glass; when rain fell in torrents it was a white shimmer, and at night it was a fallen star, silver and golden and glowing.

It never went out.

When the clearing of the forest had first begun, so that the men of the village could collect wood to build their first homes many generations ago, the woodcutters had found the Candle. It had been hidden deep within the forest, but now it sparkled on its fringe, for all the trees shielding it had been cut down, yet no one dared to go further. The queer, unwavering light was inexplicable, and was therefore a warning.

Perhaps this warning was what had led the villagers to invent the Nighthawk. There was no account of any such being in any of the old woodcutters’ accounts of the discovery of the candle, yet still he stalked through the people’s folklore and imaginations like a dread ghost: Tall, slim, deadly. He sometimes wore a mask, and sometimes not; sometimes carried a sword, sometimes a pistol, and sometimes merely throttled unwary travelers with his hands.

For he was always a being of death. And he had always wide, dilated eyes, whose blackness could destroy the mind of a victim who gazed within them, and long black hair. His fate was, inextricably, bound up with the Candle flame. Women said he haunted it, guarding the light jealously, for it was his soul. And the men laughed, but did not contradict.

Because in the end it was merely a story, and the womenfolk could make what they liked of it, as long as they did not frighten the children too terribly. True, no one knew exactly what made the light burn in the trees, the light that never went out, but this was an ancient land, with ancient mysteries, and since the light did no one any harm, and no one needed wood any longer, there was no point in brooding. There was no Nighthawk; of that all men and even the storytelling wives were certain.

But children were warned against playing near the Nighthawk’s Candle.

Just in case.