They say that long ago, in the time before matches, the village kept one fire burning in the square. The old keeper, Sula, looked after it with her apprentice Yara, a girl of twelve. On the night of the first frost, a flood of rain poured into the square and put the fire out. Winter was near, and the village had food but no flame.
Sula said the only fire left was on the Smoking Mountain, where the ground glows red, three days' walk away. Yara, who had been on watch when the fire died, went. She carried a clay pot with ash, a bundle of dry moss and her grandmother's red scarf.
On the first day she walked up the long valley. On the second she crossed the river on a fallen log. On the third, at the mountain, she lit a bundle of bark at a glowing crack in the rock and laid a coal in the pot, in the ash, under the moss.
The way back was harder. The log had been swept away, so she waded the river to her chest, holding the pot above her head. It rained again, and she sheltered the ember under her cloak and breathed on it all night, as one breathes on a sleeping child. On the last morning the moss was gone and the ember was the size of a seed, so she fed it her red scarf.
She walked into the square at dawn with a thread of smoke rising from the pot. Sula blew, the village held its breath, and a flame stood up. From that day every house kept a fire and gave a coal to any neighbor whose fire went out: fire belongs to the ones who share it. They say the mountain still smokes a little, as if it were waiting for her to come back.
