Sharey's Day

There was a third of a can of oil, and there were fifty-five lanterns.

Everybody went quiet when Wondy carried it up from the bank, because everybody in that yard could do that sum. A third of a can is a lovely amount of oil right up until the moment you count the lanterns.

"We'll do the bridge and the gate properly," somebody said, "and leave the orchard dark."

"No," I said.

I do not say no very often and I said it faster than I have ever said anything.

So I sat down in the middle of the yard with the can and a spoon and a great many small dishes, and worked it out.

Not equal shares. That was the first thing I threw out, and it took me about a minute to be sure of it, and I want to write down why, because "half for you, half for me" is the thing I am known for and I abandoned it before breakfast was cleared.

Equal shares would have been fair to the lanterns. It would have been no use at all to the path.

A lantern in the hedge tunnel has to burn for five hours in proper dark with nothing else near it. A lantern on the bridge has the moon doing half its work. The three steps by the gate only need lighting from the moment the walking starts. So: deep in the dark places, thin where the moon helps, and nothing wasted at all on the stretch that Winky's own windows were going to light anyway.

It took an hour. Mello sat with me the whole time passing dishes, not fussing, not hurrying me, not once asking how much longer — which is a thing I did not appreciate properly until afterwards, when I found out what that queue outside was like.

We finished with one spoonful over.

And I took it up the orchard to Jelly.

Now. The orchard was done. Forty hooks, filled, that afternoon. It did not need a spoonful of oil and I knew it did not need a spoonful of oil.

"What's this for?"

"Spare," I said. "In case."

It was not for in case.

I had been up there earlier with half a sandwich, at one o'clock, after the row — because Jelly had spent the entire morning on a hill where nobody could see, and had come down and had a shout about it, and had gone back up. And I had made Jelly count three good things the orchard had that the bridge did not, and Jelly told me it was a stupid question and then counted them anyway.

Shade. Apples. Forty hooks in a line, every one filled.

The spoonful was the second half of that conversation.

I did the plates at Winky's, which is not a job anybody gave me.

There is a particular moment at a party with fifty-five fluffs in it when there is not quite enough of something, and everybody notices at the same time and pretends not to, and it goes slightly flat. I have been watching for that moment my whole life. Tonight it was the cake, at about half past nine.

So I cut what was left the way I had done the oil: proper pieces to the fluffs who had been on the far end of the path since sunrise and had not sat down, thin ones to the rest of us who had, and none at all to me and Handy, who had both eaten at Market Row and were the only two who knew it.

Nobody noticed. That is the point of doing it properly.

Then Beamy read the envelope out, and the oil sums were on it, and Jelly cheered — the loudest cheer in the room, from the fluff who had been furthest away all day.