The line was carved into the standing stone at the edge of the pasture, shallow enough that rain had nearly erased it. The farmer who owned the land dismissed it as decoration whenever visitors asked, something commissioned by an ancestor with more money than judgment. He had repeated that explanation for so many years that he delivered it without hesitation, despite the cattle refusing to graze within thirty feet of the stone and the pale circle of scorched grass around its base returning every spring with exactly the same circumference.
I was staying nearby during the summer the light came. Everyone who witnessed it later described something different: a falling star, sheet lightning, a flame descending from a clear sky. I remember brightness arriving just after dusk with impossible speed, stopping directly above the stone and spreading across the pasture until every fence post, blade of grass, and frozen animal possessed edges sharper than daylight could produce. For several seconds I could see through my own hands well enough to make out the bones.
The farmer found me afterward and seemed less surprised than tired. His family kept records, he admitted, though never where outsiders could find them. The light returned once every generation or two and always appeared while a woman from the household or its immediate circle stood nearby. Those who saw it clearly tended to live strangely afterward. Their bodies aged slowly, wounds closed too cleanly, and illnesses that should have taken months sometimes passed in days.
The family had once treated this as a blessing. Eventually someone noticed the arithmetic.
Each unusually long life corresponded with shortened ones elsewhere in the family. Children died in accidents. Healthy spouses developed sudden illnesses. People who had never seen the pasture seemed to lose years in ways nobody could predict. The records contained no proof, only enough repetition to make gratitude uncomfortable.
Thirty-two years have passed since that evening. My face has changed little. Friends younger than I am have acquired white hair, grandchildren, artificial joints, and the careful movements of age while I continue receiving surprised looks from doctors comparing me with old photographs.
I visit the stone occasionally at dusk. The scorched ring has widened by several inches since my last visit, and recently another woman from the neighboring farm has begun walking there in the evenings. I have considered warning her. What stops me is the growing suspicion that the light never chooses anyone at random, and that whatever accounting governs its visits may already have included the warning.
©2013 Rhyan Scorpio-Rhys
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