The Observatory

The laughter of the children was hushed. Swiftly the youngsters crept around the tiled floor of the Observatory, dropping bundles of dry daisies and lighting each one on fire. Around them, the sunset drew a film of dimness over the desert village. In the middle of the village rose the Tower, on the roof of which was the Observatory with a tiny stone house in its center, just then encircled by a bright golden ring of flames and glowing-eyed children. The December dusk sky overhead darkened into its last few hours of the year, but flames lit up corner after corner of the Observatory. Daniel, who would have once led them in lighting fires, only sat that evening, clutching his broken ankle, and watched the others breathe orange life into the desert weeds.

Riho, after lighting her daisies, came over to Daniel and whispered, her voice as light and wispy as her faintly lit hair, “Are you okay? I’m scared. My aunt will be angry.”

“Aw, she’ll never find out.”

“It’s time we taught that coward a lesson,” Luis said. Being eleven, he was a few years older than the rest of them. He stood while everyone else crouched, breathing under the dome of the open evening air.

“He’s a fireman. Used to be one, at least.”

“We’re avenging the other fireman. Let’s see how this bastard likes a taste of his own medicine.”

Daniel murmured to Riho, “Do you really think the fireman killed his friend in the Observatory during a fire and then ran away?”

“That’s why we’re finally doing this tonight instead of just scribbling insults on the tiles like we usually do, isn’t it?” Riho didn’t seem quite sure, either, but she just looked down and mumbled, “Besides, he used to be a firefighter. This shouldn’t be hard for him to put out.”

“Oh, God—” they all heard Victory—who had been keeping watch—gasp.

It all happened in a moment. Daniel and Riho looked up, and immediately were nearly trampled by the rest of the children, fleeing the now flame-filled Observatory. Trying to help Daniel to his feet, Riho descried a human figure stumbling out of the stone house into the ash-filled chaos.

“Daniel, Daniel, it’s him, it’s the fireman!” Riho choked, pulling him. “Come on! Run!”

Daniel saw as well the last of his friends disappear down the stone stairs and heard, not far away, the hoarse shouting of the fireman to whose dwelling they had just set fire. A flame licked his broken ankle and he screamed. Riho, although she was sobbing in terror, did not leave him. The two children cowered amidst the inferno. But from the blaze the fireman lunged at them, and with an iron grasp he drew both Daniel and Riho to their feet, somehow dragged them through ashes and sparks, and sent them careening into the cold stone wall.

They both coughed, the night air soothing their constricted throats. A few yards away, the fireman beat to death the remaining flames over the charred black daisies.

Daniel and Riho then met the man’s glowering eyes. They had expected him to have the slit-eyes and slinky fingers of a coward. Instead he stood towering over them with thickly veined hands and iron-streaked hair.

“Was it you two that set this fire?”

“—It was me, sir. He didn’t do anything,” whispered Riho.

Daniel swallowed. “It wasn’t her, actually. It was the rest of us.”

“Lies,” the man said unexpectedly. He threw down his wet sack and sat before them with a cough. “I saw the culprits run, leaving you two behind.”

“We’re sorry.”

“You don’t cover for your friends like that. Understood? What did you tell those lies for? They left you to die in the fire without looking back.”

“What about you, sir? Have you ever done something like that?” Daniel asked. Riho hissed at him sideways, “Do you have a death wish!” but Daniel was strangely unafraid of this man.

“Ah. Well, boy, what if I told you,” the fireman said quietly, “that you were told a twisted tale? Not that I expect you to believe a fifty-year-old hermit banished to the Observatory after that incident, but what if my so-called heroic friend left me smoke-dazed in the Observatory while he fled?”

“But he died, sir, didn’t he? And you lived.”

“He came back here with a piece of broken timber to finish me off. He was the head of our crew, you see, renowned for bravery, and he knew that I’d seen him run. But he didn’t know I was still conscious, armed with a wild rage.” He looked up at the night sky. “It’s strange. Not once have I regretted doing it, but it feels wrong—somehow—to be telling you children about this.”

“Did anyone see you—kill—him?” Daniel asked, glancing at Riho, whose jaw was trembling.

“The rest of the crew saw me running out of the Observatory where they found his body later. Since then I’ve been the bastard fireman that the entire village despises.”

Riho then looked up at the man. “I believe you, sir. I feel crazy for saying this, but I truly do.”

“So do I.” Daniel promised.

The man suddenly rose roughly, wincing as he did. “Head back down home if you’re both okay. And don’t come back here and see to it that no one else does, either. I didn’t tell you this for you to try and explain all this to everyone. Don’t try. If there’s one thing I want you two to remember from tonight, it’s that there’s no use in trusting your friends, for they’ll turn on you the second they can.” He turned to Riho. “Why did you wait for him? You should have run. And you—” he pointed to Daniel. “Just because she stayed with you doesn’t mean you can trust her from now on. Is that clear? Now off with you both.”

Either the man failed to communicate this message powerfully enough, or Daniel and Riho read the pain in his lined eyes as he spoke, for they came again the next dawn to see him. And when they found him on his knees, clutching his chest and coughing up dark mucus, having inhaled smoke all his life, they clung to his hands and did not let go. When the man, suddenly understanding that this was how his life was to end, began to cry chokingly, Daniel and Riho wiped his tears, thanking him for saving them, and stayed by his side until the morning of the New Year came.