Same Same But Different (2009)

"What's worst of all," she added as she carried the flame to the twisted wick, "he took coin from me for it-not a mere bucket of ewe's milk, or some trifle we could spare! And it does this! Sir!"-rounding on the traveler-"do you not think it criminal, to take advantage of a poor soul thus?"

But the traveler was not paying attention. Gazing at the lamp-chimney, which as predicted was on the instant blearing over, he was uttering sad words within his head:

"Ah, Wolpec, Wolpec! Has it come to this?"

Once this pallid thing of grimy smoke had been an elemental he-even he-was now and then compelled to consult. There were conditions attached to such inquiry, by which he-even he-was forced to abide. Here, now, on the chimney of a common lamp, there writhed blurred characters such as formerly had expressed transcendent truths... but who alive could certify the meaning of such messages? Those tongues had been forgotten everywhere!'

Reacting to the concentration of his gaze, the woman ventured, "Sir, you're not by any chance skilled in the repair of lamps, are you... ?"

Then, registering the fierceness of his expression, she fell into a puzzled silence.

Some of the old laws, it appeared, still stood, but the understructure of them must have cracked, as a building may retain its general shape yet lack huge plates of stucco from its facade and be unsafe to walk the stairways of. For this lamp was showing three truths in the ancient manner, without the ancient and obligatory rites....

Of three, the first incomprehensible, in a variety of writing that creatures not quite man-like had employed to record dealings in imponderables. It had been hazarded that the records concerned a trade in souls, but that was barely an approximation. In any case, being an invention of chaos, the symbols had any value anyone cared to assign them.

And it was fading, and it was time to ask again.

"How come you to this pass?" the traveler thought.

Now, the one debatable, in a single hieroglyph such as might have been seen on the high pillars of EtnumYuzup before that metropolis dissolved into dust with thunderclaps. The Grand Five Weavers had grown self-indulgent, and no longer observed the instructions they had issued to themselves in the days of the foundation of their city. This might be read plainly; the traveler read it.

One would cease.

Now for the final truth, the ineluctable... but the question must be aptly posed. Indeed, the traveler realized, it had better not be a question but a statement, a truth of comparable import. Within his head he framed it: "I have many names, but a single nature."

The weakening elemental understood, and on the glass appeared the characters of a poem by Shen-i-ya Eng-t'an Zwu, who sat for a thousand years beneath an elm while none could tell whether he lived or died, so wholly was he attuned to the world around.

Smoke

fades into the air

is no more seen

The candle-dousing winds of ages seemed to sough in the chimney of the cottage.

"Sir," the woman said anxiously, "I wish you'd not bother so much with our trifling problem!"

"Is it not in fact a great matter for you, lacking a lamp?" The traveler didn't raise his head.

The woman sighed. "Well, I must confess it is, sir. For eating close by the fire, and breathing smoke, is hard on my little one, and my man Yarn above all, what with his chest-trouble.... I'd set my heart on having a good bright clear new lamp!"

"As you wish," said the traveler, not without sorrow, "so be it."

He blew out the flame. When he cleaned the glass and lit it anew, it shed a grateful pure yellow light.