How to Light the First Fire

On the first cold night of autumn, Rosie was left in charge of the house for one whole hour. She was eight, and she took the job very seriously. She put on Dad’s reading glasses, because Dad always wore them when he was in charge of anything. She could not see a single thing through them. She wore them anyway. You cannot be in charge with your ordinary face.

Dad had gone to meet Grandma off the train. Grandma was coming to stay, and Grandma felt the cold. She wore one cardigan in summer and two in the autumn. So Rosie had decided something. When Dad opened the front door tonight, the house would be warm. And Rosie would have done it all by herself.

Now, you might think lighting a fire is just a matter of a match. In most houses it is. But Rosie lived in a tall thin house at the end of a lane, and in that house, the fire lived up the chimney.

His name was Old Crackle. He was a grumpy little flame about the size of a cat. All summer long he slept on a ledge high up inside the chimney, curled up on the same sooty brick. That brick stayed warm all summer, because he was on it. And on the first cold night of every autumn, somebody had to talk him down.

That was always Dad’s job. This year, Dad had left a letter on the kitchen table. Rosie pushed the glasses down her nose and read over the top of them. That was backwards from the way Dad did it. It looked every bit as serious.

How to light the first fire, said the letter. Knock on the chimney twice.

Rosie went into the front room. Dad had already laid the logs in the grate. She knocked twice on the bricks above the fireplace. Then she crouched down and looked up the chimney.

A long way up, a very long way, because it was a tall thin house, there was a small orange glow. It looked like someone reading under the covers with a flashlight.

A voice came down, dusty and cross.

“I am not coming down.”

Rosie looked back at the letter.

He will say he is not coming down, said the letter. He always says that.

Rosie was pleased. So far, everything was going exactly to plan.

Give him a pinecone, said the letter. They are in the basket by the door.

Rosie picked the best pinecone in the basket. It was fat and brown and a little bit sticky. She held it up the chimney as far as her arm would go.

“I have brought you a pinecone,” she said.

There was a sniff from far above.

“Pinecones,” said Old Crackle, “are summer food. I am not coming down.”

Rosie looked back at the letter.

The next line was in capital letters. DO NOT MENTION THE BARBECUE.

It did not say why. Rosie badly wanted to know why. Had Old Crackle been to the barbecue? Had somebody put sausages on him? Was that why he was sick of summer food? She opened her mouth to ask. Then she remembered the capital letters, and shut it again.

You may be wondering about the barbecue too. I am sorry. Nobody has ever told me either.

If that does not work, said the letter, tell him how cold it is. Be firm.

Rosie stood up very straight, which is how you are firm.

“It is very cold,” she said up the chimney. “The puddles in the lane have gone crunchy. I can see my breath in the hall. And Grandma is coming, and she has to wear two cardigans even now.”

“I am not a coat,” said Old Crackle. “I am not coming down.”

Rosie looked back at the letter.

There was nothing else. There was only DO NOT STAND TOO CLOSE, HE SPITS, and then Love, Dad. She turned it over. The back was blank. The letter had run out.

If you think Rosie gave up and sat on the stairs to wait for Dad, you do not know Rosie. She was in charge. She had the glasses on.

On the kitchen table sat a paper bag of chestnuts. She and Dad had bought them at the market that morning, for Grandma. Rosie picked up the bag and gave it a shake, so it rattled. Then she did not talk to the chimney at all. She talked to the room, loudly.

“Oh dear,” said Rosie. “What a pity. A whole bag of chestnuts, and nobody in this house knows how to roast them properly.”

There was a silence up the chimney.

“I am not coming—“ said Old Crackle. Then he stopped. “Nobody?”

“Nobody,” said Rosie. “Dad burns them. Grandma forgets they’re in.”

“Every chestnut,” said Old Crackle, “needs a little cross cut in the top, or it goes off bang. Does anybody in this house know that?”

“No,” said Rosie, who had not known it until just then.

And Old Crackle came down.

That is the way with grumps. Tell a grump to come down and he digs in. Tell him nobody else can do it properly, and watch how fast he moves.

First a little soot pattered into the grate. Then the orange glow grew bigger and brighter. And then there he was, walking down the inside of the chimney on long thin legs of flame, like a lit-up heron. It was a long way down, and he was cross about it the whole way. He stepped into the grate, turned round three times like a cat, and sat down on the logs. The logs caught with a crackle, which is how he got his name.

“Chestnuts,” said Old Crackle. “On the hearth, where I can reach. And don’t sit too close. I spit.”

Rosie tipped the chestnuts onto the hearth. She fetched the brown bowl with the chip in it and sat on the rug, a sensible distance back. Old Crackle nicked a little cross in each chestnut with the tip of one finger. He held them in his two hands of flame and turned them and turned them. When a chestnut was done, it went pop, and he flicked it across the hearth into the brown bowl. Pop, ping. Pop, ping. Every single one landed in the bowl.

The chimney ran up through the middle of the tall thin house, and one by one, the rooms along it got warm. The front room. The stairs. The landing. And the little room at the very top, where Grandma would sleep.

Then there was a car in the lane, and the front door opened, and in came Dad and Grandma with the cold still coming off their coats. Grandma had on a hat and a scarf and a coat and two cardigans. She stopped in the doorway of the front room.

The room was warm. Rosie was sitting on the rug in Dad’s glasses. And Old Crackle was popping chestnuts, one at a time, into the brown bowl.

“Well!” said Grandma. She took off her hat. She took off her scarf. She took off her coat. And then, on the first cold night of autumn, which nobody in the family had ever seen before, she took off one of her cardigans.

Pop went the biggest chestnut of the night. It was the first one to miss the bowl. It flew across the rug and stopped right against Dad’s shoe.

“That one went the wrong way,” said Old Crackle, very quickly. “Nothing to do with me. He can keep it, I suppose.”

Pop went the second-biggest. It landed right in Grandma’s hand. Old Crackle did not say that one was an accident.

“Thank you, dear,” said Grandma, and Old Crackle burned a little brighter and pretended he hadn’t.

“Did you do all this by yourself?” said Dad.

“The letter ran out,” said Rosie. “So I had to.”

Dad took his reading glasses off Rosie’s nose and put them on his own. He read the letter from top to bottom. He looked at the bowl of chestnuts. He looked at Old Crackle, who was very busy looking at the logs.

“I’m adding the chestnuts to the letter for next year,” said Dad. “In capitals.”