Ekilm

It was night.
To all gathered within the candle-lined snug known the Bookmaker’s tavern, the night had arrived no less irregularly than the many previous. The routine of day had waxed and waned, and without occasion the lantern-moon had returned to the sky. But to one booth, still rapt in the joys of conversation, there was so much more that a night could entail.
It would begin with dusk: the faint traces of day’s end as light recedes into gloaming, and then twilight would follow, the scattering sunlight of Greig’s forge fading from the heavens and becoming another star in the sky; there was soft night, and good night, and, for some, there was even time where the night may soon die. But amongst all the varied and tenebrous shades of nightfall, it was agreed that Friday was the best of them all.

For Twenty-two years of retiring Fridays, the editors of the Royal Stallinger Dictionary would stopper their ink pots and amble down to the pub for an argument about language–and whatever the soup of the week was supposedly composed of. Lexicographers are, by and by, trapped by the progression of evolving definition, and as even the faces of this merry band had changed, the conversations invariably didn’t.
And so as night draws on, it came to be that three last voices were left to solve the troubles of the day. Three voices to conclude the reasonings of all those who had left, and three voices to draft up an errata for their bill. 

‘Why should it be called a “sad-iron”?’ one such voice asked from a moment of ebrious enlightenment, ‘Lexically I’d say they were more stoic than miserable.’

‘Well, it must be time for you to brush up on your Loren, young miss. Sad comes from their word for stone.’

‘Stone?’ a third voice joined from their dozing half-attention, ‘The Loren word for stone is “yir” I think you’re mistaking it for a Garan word, “sade”: to be weary of finding stone with shovel.’

‘Well firstly, they’re iron.’ the first voice continued, ‘it’s quite apparent in the name. And secondly, I wasn’t arguing that the etymology needed probing, it was just a comment that they don’t tend to look very sad. Strike me pink for having an idle thought.’
Leaning back into the booth with a faux harumph, Ally folded her arms and raised an eyebrow at her fellow editors.
‘Although you might not have encountered a sad-iron in your time, Colin. They’re quite good at smoothing out wrinkles.’

Now too leaning back in an attempt to prevent himself from being casually out-mocked, Colin began a long retort about a furrowed brow showing a greater intelligence and then rapt the table with his knuckles to emphasise that he had won the point. It had been twenty years since he had joined the dictionary and ever since they had published its first edition, Colin had never been lost for choice of words.
Dizzy from first sips of his fourth pint, the aged editor put a hand on his head and attempted to still the world for a moment.
‘By god,’ he began with a mischievous smile, ‘some bugger has made off with my hair.’
Colin, a curmudgeonly shaped little man whose hair had long ago made the great migration to his chin, was referred to by his colleagues as being somewhat of a short-changed coin: blemished of both sides but miraculously still in circulation. He was oftentimes stuffy, over-serious, and frank with his manner, but had a laughter deep within himself that was uniquely joyful.
Having worked with him for Ten years now, Susan would often reprise an old story of a time when the coin had attempted to remove the word apology from an edition being produced for the tax office. When the mistake was noticed, he was asked by the editor-in-chief to explain himself and he simply commented that “he couldn’t find the words”.

‘Can an object have feelings?’ Susan asked, while lost in the orange flicker of a near-spent candle that she had placed behind her glass of gin. ‘Have you ever known a lonely carrot?’

‘I’ve never known one to object when they’re boiled.’ Colin replied before standing and whisking his pint off to the smokers lounge for the effect of the gesture.

Ally laughed, hating herself for it immediately, while Susan dwelt far too lost in reflection for any wordplay. She had spent the trailing week trapped in the doldrums of new submissions and had only today reached the letter S. She had always considered S to be a forlorn little creature, so overburdened with various entries that it seemed lost within its own crowd. Closing her eyes the editor saw hundreds of index cards flutter across her half-sight and pinched the bridge of her nose to prevent a headache.

‘Sade, what a charming word.’

There was a tension released and Susan opened her eyes to an art gallery still somewhat under construction. Softly shaded walls stretched off into the distance as dustcoat wearing figures hurried to and fro, moving pictures and painting walls. All around papers and cards swirled in the windless air, ink scratching across already busy pages. Nearby a violin searched for a distant melody and in turn a poet searched for a way to describe it. There was a weight to the room that Susan could only remember having experienced in the silence of music hall, and she sat in awe of the gallery for a moment.
Across the room a figure waved their arms to and fro as if conducting the hum of malady around them. Neatly they jabbed upward with their hand, plucking a card from the murmuration and then regarded it with a flourish. Marching over to Susan, the figure then carefully placed the card on a table and took a seat on what remained of the booth–or at least the part of it that was still managing to float unsupported in the air.

‘Solid Iron,’ the figure said with a smile of colour, ‘It comes from a misspelling, all the best words do.’

Susan could only blink.

‘They can make plants grow in neat lines but trust a farmer to maintain consistent spelling and your cabbages will become cauliflowers before your very eyes. Not to bother though, “No bother there is when there is no bother”. Although, I’m afraid that saying becomes muddled in your Stallinger King’s.’
The figure shifted between lines of water colour and of charcoal. From chiselled to crocheted their dust coat changed along with their form, streaks of colour and light ever changing, flowing as if water along a stream.

Susan continued to blink.
Unsure if her last gin and tonic was the full stop after several too many, the lexicographer attempted again to take in what had become of the tavern. The booth was normal, heavy lacquer on a heavy table, candles so haphazardly placed that one would often lose their drink amongst them. But away from the booth it seemed as though the tavern had become less than finite. The gallery was beautiful, canvas turned from sketches into paintings and every shelf or surface that was not covered by paper had been covered with books. It was a busy gallery, not one of grandeur or of indulgence. Susan’s mind returned to a time of her youth and pictured the walls of a painter still learning their craft, the joy of colour being untangled from within.
‘Ekilm,’ Susan said, unsure of where the word had come from in her mind. The reader, the poet, the god of knowledge, of invention.   

‘A word that is hard to pin down. Did you know that the people of southern Illos use the same word for song as they do for idea? It is a simple language but one of great melody. From simple threads, a tapestry can be woven.’

Fluttering past, Susan caught an index card become drawn with the word arras and smiled at the allusion, glasses clinked and a cheer sounded from a nearby booth.

‘Hello, are you home in there, Sue?’

Opening her eyes, Susan saw that Ally was waving a hand beneath her nose and the faint breeze made the world no less fogy.
‘I appear to have slipped off,’ she said, closing her eyes and again dreaming of index cards and words with floating meanings. ‘But your question of the iron…’

‘Go on.’

‘Have you ever tried asking how it was feeling?’

Slowly, the night reaches its end and the dreams of tired minds drift towards the memories of day and of sunshine.
A painter sits below a tree, a nook of its low bows providing near enough of an easel. Elsewhere, a reader circles a word unknown to them and pauses to consider its meaning. A blacksmith in town strikes a pattern upon their work and regards the cooling metal with pride. From simple threads the day is then woven and moments unseen give life to art and ideas. Words find the colours new definition in these moments, and creation becomes all the richer for this simplicity.  

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J. McCray
2024