The Lower Lanterns

Dear Ailsa,

I climbed down inside the west pier yesterday to replace a length of cable. The gulls had packed the service hatch with mussel shells, and the hinges smelled of old pennies when I forced them open.

You used to sit above that hatch with your legs through the railings. I can still see the yellow scarf you wore, tied at the back because you disliked the ends touching your chin. I told you it would blow away. You said the wind knew who owned it.

The cable should have turned toward shore beneath the decking. Instead, it entered one of the iron piles and went straight down.

I asked Fen at the harbor office about it. He said there are old circuits everywhere, laid by men who never labeled anything. Then he gave me a coil of replacement wire and asked whether I might look at the kettle socket while I was there. That is Fen's answer to most mysteries.

At low tide I descended the maintenance ladder with a lamp and a spanner. The lowest rungs were slick with green weed. There, just above the waterline, I found another junction box bolted to the pile.

It was warm.

Inside, the old cable divided into three tarred strands. One returned to the pier lights. The others vanished below the water, passing through brass collars green with age. Someone had polished the collars recently. I could see the small circular strokes in the metal.

I waited until evening before touching anything.

The harbor was empty by then. Rain had passed inland, leaving the clouds rinsed thin and violet. One by one, I switched off the lamps along the pier. Their reflections shortened and went out.

But the lights beneath them remained.

At first I thought they were trapped brightness, the way the eye holds a candle after the candle is gone. Then one moved behind the shadow of a piling.

I lay flat on the wet boards and looked down.

There is another harbor below ours, Ailsa.

Its lanterns stand in pairs along a road that slopes through the water. They do not sway or flicker. They burn with a patient amber light, descending until distance turns them blue. Between them, boats pass slowly outward with their sails furled.

The sea was clear enough for me to see the old chapel roof below the channel, and beyond it the drowned hedges running white with shells. I knew none of those things were there. I knew the channel had been dredged to mud within my lifetime.

Then your dinghy went beneath me.

The scrape along its blue gunwale was just as I remembered. Your yellow scarf was tied to the tiller, streaming upward through the dark water, though there was no current.

You were sitting in the stern.

You did not look drowned. You looked older.

That was the moment I understood why every harbor lamp shines twice.

I nearly pulled the tarred cables free. My hand was already on them when the lower lanterns dimmed. The boats stopped together. Not one touched another. They simply waited in the black water, all those quiet passengers facing the darkness ahead.

So I tightened the collars instead.

The lights brightened. Your boat continued down the road until it became one amber point among many. I watched until the tide covered the lowest rung and the cold reached my knees.

I am leaving this letter inside the warm junction box. Paper may travel where voices cannot.

Tonight there is a new lantern below the others, far beyond the drowned chapel. It is small, but I can see it from our kitchen window. It seems to mark a turning.

I hope you know the way.