It was the sixteenth century in fall of 2016. The barren Kingdom of Finehaven opened its gates to a new recruit. Dead leaves crunched under her boots and shop counters slept in dust. On the cusp of reawakening, trailers began to park behind castles and tents sprung up in meadows. Once empty of jugglers, crowns, and turkey legs, Finehaven returned from three seasons bare as it had every year. Fall had arrived. The trees shuddered to welcome the new Candle Wench.
Like most who stepped into Finehaven, the new recruit’s head was full of fairytales. She had been fired from her insurance job last month and had begun to daydream childish fancies. No more emails about HVAC repairs. Instead, she could don a corset and feel its tight hug. No more office pizza Fridays. Now every day was to become a gentle Halloween. She’d never have to pick up the phone for mechanics or bosses again. Finehaven forbid phones from its hires. (Phones didn’t exist in the sixteenth century.)
The new Candle Wench found the wooden sign etched with the words “Carved Candles.” Inside, empty shelves lined the walls. The floorboards creaked. Outside, forgotten marigolds decayed at the building’s entrance. Behind the sixteenth century façade, a giant RV was parked between shop and forest.
That was where she met her four coworkers, the Candlemen.
“You’re cuter than the last girl, so you are already better,” said one.
Another handed his ID card to her. It showed that he was a registered pedophile. “Since we’ll be working together, you should know this about me,” he said.
The third seemed nice, but smelled like vomit.
The fourth was the boss, the Candle Carver. To time travelers who paid to visit Finehaven, he was a jovial merchant, hardworking, and knowledgeable of all things wax. He sat his large body by an enormous vat to dip his creations. He twisted wax into lighthouses, mushrooms, castles with dragons, and wedding candles. When Finehaven was empty though, he listened to Fox News and told stories of killing chickens and bad marriages. In the winter, he kept the space heater to himself while the Candlemen shivered. In the summer, he kept the fan by his seat while the Candlemen dripped in sweat.
The Candlemen worked hard to bring the wax vat to life from its hibernation. All three used their bodies to scoot the metal monstrosity into the Candle Carver’s workspace. One had to dive under the floorboards among spiders and crickets to hook up electricity. Soon the vat hummed with life. Lots of colored wax liquefied and bubbled.
The Candle Wench scraped together an outfit for the Candle Carver’s approval: a white blouse, black skirt, and a baby’s breath flower crown. For thirty dollars, she bought her first corset. It was night black and embroidered with silver vines. The corset was cheaply made with plastic bones and ribbon that could not tighten completely.
“You’re so lucky I’m not taking a peek,” a Candleman said as she dressed in the closet full of boxes of scented candles.
***
When Finehaven fully awoke, its meadows filled with time travelers. Lutes, flutes, and violins played at the gates like a siren song. The day began always with cannon fire, and visitors lined up to pay for a taste of past, when Romeo and Juliet was new and women squeezed their skeletons tight. White girls lined up for mimosas and little boys dragged mothers to see camels. Families took selfies with faerie dusted cheeks while their breath smelled of roasted pecans.
The Candle Wench was stuck at the candle shop’s cash register, watching the merriment beyond the candle covered walls. The once empty store shelves were now lined with buckets of scented jar candles. Shield-shaped signs with price tags and “no smoking” hung from the walls.
The Candle Carver sat by his vat working on ribbon candles while the time travelers looked on. First, he peeled white wax skin back, showing stripes of blue, pink, and purple. Next, he tied bows from the peeled wax and rolled them down like streamers.
In the meadows, the Candlemen hawked their wares. They mingled with the time travelers and enticed them to the shop with fragrances and honeyed words. The Candle Wench wished to be out with them, but the Candle Carver found her voice too soft to peddle goods and kept her inside.
Whenever a time traveler entered, the Candle Wench welcomed them in a voice not her own. She spoke old English laced with “Good day,” “My lady,” and “Huzzah.” In time, she would warp her voice so often; it would come with her outside of Finehaven in places like Walmart and her apartment complex.
The Candle Wench’s favorite duty was flower dipping. Every morning, the Candle Carver bought flowers from the Flower Ladies who travelled around Finehaven. The Candle Wench dunked each flower gently in the clear wax vat slot. Behind the shop, she hung the roses and sunflowers to dry. When they no longer dripped, she gave them a soft spray of glitter on their petal tips. In such a state, the flowers could last for years and years. “Like a zombie,” one of the Candlemen said.
As the weather chilled, the Candle Wench kept close to the warmth of the wax vat. Her feet ached all the time, since only sixteenth century shoes were allowed for the hires of Finehaven, no sneakers, no Velcro, or soles built to run. Only leather to disguise the toes, and wrap the secret of modern, pug-printed socks. The poor Candle Wench could only afford cheap slip-ons that never stood a chance against the hours of standing by the register.
With raw ankles and crooked toes, the Wench’s day ended as it began, with a bang of fired cannon. The gravel roads behind the walls of Finehaven rocked bruises into her heels. There, those bound to the sixteenth century lived away from their stores and costumes. Rennies, they called themselves, like the carnies in carnivals. October had come, and pumpkins smiled by the wheels of their camping trailers.
On her walk to the parking lot, the Candle Wench sometimes saw animals. Finehaven had plenty of creatures for its petting zoo and various shows. For the bird show, they had a kookaburra all the way from Australia. When the Wench passed its cage, it sometimes laughed.
At home, in her little apartment, the Wench peeled off her shoes and corset. Burned out, she lay on her couch and scrolled on her phone. The twenty-first century was all tears and fire. Brexit, the Pulse nightclub massacre, Tennessee wildfires, fake news, Zika virus, presidential election, and clown sightings all caused hysteria. The Candle Wench shut her eyes and dreamed of medieval maidens, twirling skirts, and crystal crowns. Maybe one of the jousting knights would notice her, and pull her upon his horse.
Then they’d gallop away from it all.
***
Before visitors came, the Candle Wench rested her feet at the edge of Carved Candles. She watched the dancers, whom the Candle Carver scowled at the kilted boys kicking up their legs. When the cannon fired, the Carver turned off his radio and the Candlemen left to hawk. The Candle Wench set to work on making a bouquet of wax dipped flowers.
The flowers were almost always roses, as other flora broke during the dip and tainted the vat. With red rose, the Wench scooted behind the Candle Carver to dip her first flower of the day. The vat greeted her with a droning hum, its clear wax slot bubbled with its daily anticipation.
Her fingers hung the end of the stem as she dipped. Cool fall air gave way to the vat’s sickly warmth. She had to dip slowly, or petals could be lost. As she pulled the flower back up, it snagged. It felt like something in the vat held on tight, and would not let go.
The Candle Wench pulled harder and the top half of the rose was gone. The stem did not appear broken, but cleanly cut. Her boss was too busy carving a sea wave into a candle to notice this grave mistake. The Wench threw the stem into the trash and tried another rose.
This time she did not catch a snag, but instead there was a pull. Thorns hit her fingers and she let go to witness the rose not sink, but quickly jerk into the wax.
***
The Candle Carver hated field trip days, as children never bought candles. That did not stop them from marveling at the merchandise and begging for freebies. When a kid asked the Carver if he had anything he could give for free, the Carver leaned forward so far it looked like he was about to spit on the child, and then he said: “Not on your life.”
As children danced among fairies outside and mocked the pirates, the Candle Wench thought of her missing roses. On certain days, the vat claimed more, enough that a rose graveyard could sit at the bottom of all the hot wax with no one the wiser. The Wench wondered if perhaps they’d melted and become part of every candle.
Later in the day, the Trumpet Boy visited Carved Candles. He grew up among the Rennies with a Flower Maiden mother and Cobbler father. He saw things differently than most kids his age, as he grew up in a world of tents and castles. He could juggle anything, balance on spires, and often spoke to the pigs. His job was to play the trumpet in the jousts, and to follow the queen around. He rarely visited Carved Candles, but when he did, he kept to the corners. His eyes often slid to the Candle Carver’s frothing vat.
“You love dipping the flowers, don’t you?”
The Candle Wench was surprised he spoke to her, as Rennies often ignored her. Though she worked among them, she would always be treated as an outsourced stranger. She put on a big smile for the Trumpet Boy and nodded.
“It loves when pretty girls give it flowers,” he said.
“What?”
“Vatty,” the Trumpet Boy pointed to the Candle Carver’s now empty station. He spoke of the wax vat. “You’re cuter than the last girl, so Vatty is very happy.”
***
At the Candle Wench’s dark apartment, she slipped her blistered feet free and limped to her bathroom. She prepared a hot bath with Rose Sea Soak salts, melted into the water, and shut her eyes. She thought of what she would do once her seasonal job ended, and the sixteenth century would be gone until next fall. She would have to do retail without fantasies, the laughing kookaburra, and scented wax. The twenty-first century would grip her once again, tight and inescapable.
Rising from her bath, the Wench wiped her foggy bathroom mirror. Over the past month, her cheeks had thinned and her shoulders now drooped. In the bath, she lost hair, the brown strands floating, sinking, and sticking to the fiberglass walls.
She froze when she heard a knock on her apartment door. She had no friends or family in town, and the hour was late. Wrapping herself in her white bathrobe, she made light steps to the front door. All was silent and, for a moment, the Wench wondered if she’d imagined the knock. When she placed her eye to the peephole, she met the wide golden eye of another.
She ducked, praying the peephole only worked on her end. Trembling, she tried to make no sound as she set the chain lock. That night, she slept with her bedroom door open and light on. She texted faraway friends about the knock and eye, but it was late: they must already be asleep and would not respond till morning.
***
The trees had turned red and the Candle Wench flinched at the morning cannon fire. She brought hot cocoa for the Candle Carver and his Candlemen. The wax vat hummed louder on certain days like today, when rain scared off all the time travelers. Tears fell from plastic gargoyles and goatskin boots jumped over puddles. The Candlemen stood with their cocoa at the edge of the shop, wistful to roam.
Some, like the Candle Wench, loved when it rained upon Finehaven. The Pirate Man was free of the stalkers who took his flirts and winks as real. The Queen, for once, did not stuff ibuprofen in her pockets along with her Tic Tacs and lipstick. Under some cash registers, Fair Maidens opened their phones to Facebook. Frolicking in their pens, the goats and lambs were free of the reach of children’s hands.
The twenty-five acres of Finehaven muddied until sunset, when the cannon fired to shut the gates. The Candle Carver gave the Wench her payment of seventy-five dollars in cash before settling down for the night in his RV, where an angry Chihuahua always trembled by the window. The Wench, feet numb and eyes heavy, held up her skirt over the mud and made her way past the tents and cars towards where she always parked. Wet earth clung to her cheap shoes and campfire smells wafted from the woods.
Rennies sometimes partied in the forest. The Candle Wench heard about the parties from the Candlemen. They were invited, but not her, not a non-Rennie. She imagined a get-together with beer cans and people in pajamas, where bodies could relax after long days standing and wearing stiff clothes. They’d sit on folded lawn chairs and roast marshmallows.
In the dark, navigating to her car by the light of her phone, the Wench heard music. A flute, a lute, and the gentle tap of a tambourine came from the trees. She stopped. Her phone light moved from gravel to the woods.
Curiosity took the Wench’s feet. She traversed the roots, brambles, and brush until the sounds of people talking and laughing got closer. Darting behind a tree, she peeked into a clearing. Rennies sat around a campfire wearing their Finehaven clothes. Employees usually shed their corsets and doublets for baggy t-shirts and hoodies the moment they left the kingdom’s illusion, but not here.
The time travelers were gone and now was the time to be someone else, and yet this party had all its members still in character. A juggler weaved balls in the dark sky. The lute player wore a feathered hat and strummed. Two maidens twirled around the fire, bosoms tight in corsets and hips blooming in skirts. On a log, sat a Rennie with long white dreadlocks. He wore a crown of roses. His black doublet had gold embroidery that glistened in flame light.
“My lady, pray do not hide in the dark,” he said.
The Candle Wench stepped out.
“Ah,” he smiled. “Tis ye ol’ Candle Wench.”
The rest of the Rennies mirrored his smile in unison. No familiar faces were among them. The dreadlocked man patted a space on the log next to him. The Wench sat on the moist wood and shivered. This close, the man smelled of dust. The maidens dripped in dance sweat, shoulders small and eyes wide.
“What is your name? I don’t think we’ve met before,” the Wench asked.
“I’m the Prince.”
As far as the Wench knew, Finehaven had no prince, only a queen, a woman who owned the farmland and worked as an ESL teacher when Finehaven was out of season. She possessed no sons, make believe or real.
“You’re far lovelier than the last Candle Wench,” the Prince said.
“So I am told, again and again.”
The Prince laughed, a childish sort of giggle at odds with his stoic look. The rest of the Rennies giggled in unison. One of the maidens ran a hand through her own hair, strands coming undone. The juggler stopped his tricks and handed the Wench a goblet of warm cider.
“So, what does a Prince even do in Finehaven?” the Wench asked.
She knew the Queen took at least two hours every morning to get ready before cannon. She knighted children and watched every joust. Once in a while, she visited the shops, where all the employees would coo, “Your majesty.”
“A Prince seeks a Princess,” the Prince said.
“Ah. So you flirt with the time travelers?”
“Nay. Time travelers do not interest me. They set my people on fire to stay warm.”
“Why are you talking like that?’ the Wench finally asked.
“A strange question for one with two voices.”
“Ha.” The Candle Wench began to wonder if this was all a dream or prank. Perhaps the Prince was just a man in another world and refused to leave it. Every employee of Finehaven had a little of that stubbornness in them, even the Wench.
The Prince invited her to dance. With one cider in her, she obliged. The Maidens made room and the music picked up. When the Prince took her hand, the Wench felt as though a part of herself had thawed. He twirled and cast her around him and back close. She could only move with him with no time to think. His dreadlocks spun and, for a second, the Wench imagined they melted like candle wax, thinning and elongating from bouncing around the bonfire.
Five ciders later, the Wench and Prince walked and danced in Finehaven’s streets under the waxing moon. The kingdom at night was a liminal space where eeriness and nostalgia had formed a covenant. The Prince and Wench moved to the jousting area, past tents of psychics and the booth covered in silicone elf ears.
In the jousting area, the sky was open. Benches bordered the outskirts. In the daytime, time travelers crowded the bleachers to see armored men splinter shields on horseback. The Prince helped the Candle Wench over the fence and they snuck back to visit the horses. In hay-filled air, they pet the horse’s faces.
“Do you have a horse, Prince?” the Wench asked.
“I possess only my people.”
“That’s too bad. The knights get to have horses.”
The best jobs in Finehaven were knights and royalty. The Wench, however, did not have the worst job. That belonged to Finehaven’s best comedian. All day he bent into a pillory and insulted all that passed him in the hopes they’d pay money to throw tomatoes at him.
The Wench was still unsure what the Prince did in Finehaven.
“So, did you ever find a Princess?” she asked.
“You could be one.”
The Wench blushed and pulled her hand from the horse. “Okay, wait, are we talking a job or are you asking me out?”
“Not a Wench, but a Candle Princess. One that is not trapped in a dusty little shop, but one that can attend jousts, wear finer clothes, and attend parties.”
“Well, that does sound lovely but—“
“Come with me, I’ll show you what I mean.”
He removed his crown of roses and placed it on her head. She followed him through Finehaven once more, past carts of puzzle rings and blown glass. They came to the front of Carved Candles, between the axe throwing and crystal shop.
The Prince disappeared into Carved Candles. A chill ran down the Wench’s spine. Suddenly, she felt alone and the night seemed darker. Turning on her phone light, she went after the Prince.
She called him, walled in by rows of unlit candles under tarps. No sign of him, no breath, no creak of the floorboards. But the room hummed. Someone left the vat on.
The Wench unplugged the steel vat. For a moment, she gazed at the steel to see handprints marking the top edge. White dreadlocks of wax freshly oozed down the corners.
***
The Candlemen did not know of a Prince. One suggested he could’ve been a time traveler with a screw loose. The Candle Wench still had the rose crown he gave her. Every day she wore the crown, hoping he’d come visit the little candle shop.
“She’s got some kind of crush,” the Candlemen told each other.
The weather chilled and the Wench envied the Finehaven hounds who sat on beds among space heaters with sweaters on their thin bodies. She and the Candlemen bundled up in gloves, robes, and hats. She hid leggings under her skirt to guard her legs from the wind and breathed warm breath into her hands. The heat of the vat became more welcome as she continued her dipping work.
With winter here, it was only a few weeks before Finehaven would shut its gates until next year. The Rennies would move on and the Wench would be left alone in her apartment with a computer full of job applications.
At home, she noticed she’d lost weight and that her hair was thinning. Her hairline shrunk down and her bones got closer to her skin. After Finehaven closed, she planned to see a doctor. The internet told her she may have a nutrient deficiency, perhaps a lack of protein, iron, fatty acids, and zinc. Apparently weight loss and hair loss were often connected. She could have androgenetic alopecia or telogen effluvium.
Despite the cold, she sweated on the job. She took more trips to the privy just to remove loose hair and wipe herself down. On her lunch break, she looked up “excessive sweating.” The health conditions listed included malaria, fever, leukemia, menopause, and tuberculosis. She sighed. Being a Candle Wench did not come with health insurance.
On a rainy Sunday, she fainted on the job. She stayed up late applying for jobs and skipped breakfast. Auras floated among the shelves as she stood in her assigned spot. She thought she could withstand the dizziness and held herself up at the cash register by leaning forward. When a customer wanted a rose, she moved and lost feeling in her body. Suddenly, she was on the floor. The Candlemen gathered and carried her to the back of the shop to rest in a tent, away from the eyes of time travelers.
The Wench awoke to wax dripping on her cheeks. Her eyes fluttered open to see a woman bent over her. The neck was too long and eyes too big. Her face shined like plastic with nostrils and lips melted shut. Black hair plastered backwards with white wax at the roots.
The Candle Wench began to hyperventilate. The woman’s bone-thin fingers reached for the rose crown.
She awoke struggling against a Candleman. His hands held her wrists and his knee sat between her thighs.
“You were having a nightmare! You fainted.”
“Get off me,” she yelled.
With hands up, he backed away. The Wench stormed out of the tent and leaned against the drying rack of roses. Leaning her head by the wood wall, she cried.
***
On the last week of Finehaven, the Candle Wench let some roses sink into the vat and smiled as they jerked downwards. After the fainting episode, the Carver and Candlemen treated her a little better, with offers of snacks and water throughout the day.
Her skin touched the boiling wax as she dipped a rose. With a sharp inhale, she held her index and middle finger to her chest.
“You should pay attention,” one of the Candlemen said as he got a first-aid kit from the back. “That vat can get hot as an oven.”
An hour before closing time, a time traveler in a cloak with hood up came to the cash register with ten candles: two ribbon carved, three mushrooms, five strawberry scented. It was common for customers to buy this many as Christmas closed in. As she set candles next to the register, the Candle Wench noticed the time traveler’s burn-scarred hands, a web of pink veins wrinkling her skin.
“Enjoying my old job?” said the customer.
“What?”
She spoke softly, “I was the last Candle Wench.”
***
The two Candle Wenches went out for ice cream after Finehaven closed. While helping themselves to chocolate mint and strawberry ice cream outside Ben and Jerrys they got a lot of looks from families, as they still wore their sixteenth century outfits.
The previous Candle Wench could have been mistaken for a handsome boy if not for her corset and skirt. With her hood down, she revealed short hair dyed green and piercings in her nose, lips, and eyebrows. She even ate ice cream like a boy with large bites while the current Candle Wench restrained herself to little licks.
“The Candlemen are jackasses, totally,” the previous Wench agreed. “They’re lucky I didn’t sue them for the burns they gave me.”
“Wait, your burned hands are from them?”
“Back when I thought they were my friends, we were joking around and one jokingly pretended he was going to throw me into the wax vat. I screamed bloody murder and threw my hands forward by instinct, thinking I was going to fall. It didn’t help that I was scared of the vat.”
“You were afraid of the vat?”
The former Candle Wench frowned and put down her mint chocolate chip. “I don’t like to talk about it.”
The incumbent Wench glared at her predecessor’s burned hands. “You think there is something off with the vat?”
The other Wench shivered. “No. Of course not. It’s just a normal vat.”
Whatever was unsaid thickened the hair between them. Even when eating ice cream, the Candle Wench was sweating. After a couple of bites and unable to stand the silence, she asked, “Do you know the Prince?”
“That playboy? Sure. He kept trying to get me to hang out with them but I declined. Not interested. You better stay away from him too. I think he stalked me once.”
“He did seem odd, but not like a weird playboy stalker.”
“I don’t want to be an ass since you’re treating me to ice cream, but you seem like the type that men take advantage of. No offense. You should do what I did, and quit.”
The Candle Wench poked her strawberry ice cream. It was her last week, so quitting seemed pointless. Even if she had more time in Finehaven, she would not wish to quit. If only the world of Finehaven could split in two, one with all the delights, and the other with its lesser qualities.
The Wenches threw away their ice cream cups. Before her predecessor left, the Wench asked, “Why did you work at Carved Candles in the first place?”
“Same as all who come to Finehaven,” she said. “To escape the twenty-first century.”
“We can’t ever escape it, though, can we?”
The other Wench did not hear her, already walking back to her car to drive back to the city.
***
The clock ticked down the minutes until Finehaven closed. As she weakly kept post at the cash register, the Candle Wench wondered if the Prince would visit her one last time. He did not, and the nights came early. Chills fell upon all the Rennies and time travelers as they retreated to their cars and campers. The Candle Wench stayed around the vat before the store closed. Her hands caressed the steel and she looked down at the bubbling colors until a Candleman snapped her out of the trance with a, “Hello? What’s wrong with you?” or, finally: “We’re closing, time to get the heck out.”
On the foggy morning of the last day, the Candle Wench smiled at the Candlemen and said: “So, who are we sacrificing to the vat today?” Her form had shrunk, and she hid her baldness under the dark hood of her cloak. Her thin fingers sweat under gloves.
The Carver laughed, “What do you think we do to the naughty children and thieves?”
One of the Candlemen noticed the Wench look far off towards the fog. “Are you alright?” he asked. “You look sad.”
“I’m sad that it’s my last day.”
“I’m sure you’ll be hired again next fall.”
The cannon fired.
***
Closing time was when Finehaven got coldest. The surrounding pine and oak trees cast long shadows across the Rennie camp. The Carver retreated to his RV. The Wench typically had the Candlemen help her cover all the candles in tarps, but they left to help other Rennies and were late to return. She attempted to cover the candles alone, but the tarp came undone on every opposite side.
Tired and cold, the Candle Wench went to the wax vat for warmth. She held her hands to it as though it were a campfire. Warmth spread through her body like a hot bath. Forgetting where she stood for a moment, she shut her eyes and leaned further towards the vat.
This century, the sixteenth, and all others could not hold this dreaming soul. Hands met hers, holding her gently as she melted down further and further, until she was gone.
***
It was the sixteenth century in the fall of 2017, and the barren Kingdom of Finehaven opened its doors to a new Candle Wench. She greeted her new co-workers, the Candlemen, who were preoccupied with turning on their wax vat.
Once awake, the vat hummed. The new Candle Wench found it loud, but as she stood near it throughout the fall season, the hum became white noise. When Finehaven opened and time travelers asked the Candlemen what happened to the cute Wench from last year, they had no memory of such a person.
This story previously appeared in Altered Reality Magazine, 2023.
Edited by Marie Ginga
Allison Stalberg is an indie author and journalist living in Chapel Hill, NC, that began her writing career in fan-fiction spaces. She is an interviewer for Knee Brace Press, where she talks to authors about chronic conditions, disability, mental health, and neurodivergence. Her speculative short stories on selkies, melting retail workers, and arranged alien marriages can be found in Calliope, Starry Eyed Press, Altered Reality, and Outposts of Beyond magazine. She has self-published a fantasy book, "Wander," and has a fantasy novella, "Adelina and the Bug Parties," published with OFIC magazine. She obtained her MFA in Fiction from Southern New Hampshire University. When she's not writing, Allison loves to play video games, watch anime, and make scrappy art.