THE EVERLIGHT KEEPER OF ELDERMERE

On the edge of the village of Thornwick, where the last neat fields gave way to the whispering dark of Eldermere Forest, stood a crooked little cottage that leaned slightly to the left, as if it were listening for something. The roof was patched with three different colors of slate. The chimney wore a permanent scarf of smoke. And beside the front door, on an iron hook worn smooth by centuries of hands, hung a brass lantern. Janelle Halloway had lived in that cottage for as long as she could remember. She was twelve years old, small for her age, with a tangle of brown hair that refused every ribbon her grandmother ever tied into it and a gap between her front teeth that she whistled through when she was thinking. She had ink on her fingers most days, because she liked to draw the things she saw: the beetles in the garden, the clouds over the forest, the old men playing checkers outside the village tavern. Her notebook was nearly full. She lived with her grandmother, Odalie Halloway, who was seventy-one, sharp as a thorn, and kinder than she liked anyone to notice. Gran made bread that could cure a bad mood and tea that could cure a bad cold, and she had a way of looking at a person that made them confess things they had not meant to say. The villagers called her "Mistress Odalie" to her face and "that peculiar old woman" behind her back, though always affectionately. Nobody in Thornwick could remember a time when she had not lived at the edge of the forest. Nobody thought to ask why. Every evening, just as the sun slid behind the treetops and the sky turned the color of peaches, Janelle lit the lantern. It was her job. It had been her job since she was six years old and tall enough to reach the hook if she stood on the overturned washing bucket. Gran had taught her the ritual: strike the match, count to three, touch the wick, say the words. *Light for the lost, light for the late, light for the long way home.* That was all. Fourteen words, said softly. Janelle had always thought it a funny thing to say over a lantern that no one ever walked toward, hung at the edge of a forest where no one ever came out. But Gran insisted, and over the years the words had worn a groove in Janelle's mind, comfortable as a favorite chair. Today had been an ordinary day, mostly. In the morning, Janelle had helped Gran pull carrots from the garden and had been scolded for dropping three. At noon, she had walked into the village to trade a basket of eggs for a bag of flour, and Mr. Pennyworth the baker had given her a sticky bun for free because, he said, she looked like she needed one. In the afternoon, she had sat on the garden wall and drawn a picture of the forest, and for some reason she could not explain, the drawing had come out wrong. The trees leaned too far. The shadows between them were too deep. She had scribbled over it and started again. "You're restless," Gran had said from the kitchen window. "No, I'm not." "Child, I have known you twelve years. You are restless." Janelle had shrugged and kept drawing. But Gran was right. All day there had been a feeling in the air, like the pause before a thunderclap, and it had followed Janelle from the garden to the village and back again. Even the birds had been quiet. Even the wind had seemed to hold its breath. Now the sun was setting, the sky was peach and violet and gold, and Janelle stood on her upturned bucket with the matchbook in her hand. She struck the match. It flared, warm and orange. She counted to three. She touched the flame to the wick of the old brass lantern. "Light for the lost," she began, "light for the late..." The wick caught. The flame bloomed inside the glass, small and steady, the way it always did. "...light for the long way home." And then the flame turned silver. Janelle stopped breathing. It was not a trick of the sunset. The light inside the lantern had gone from warm orange to cool, pure silver, like moonlight poured into a jar. It brightened. It grew. It pressed against the glass, and the old brass frame began to hum, a low, trembling note that Janelle felt in her teeth. "Gran?" she called, and her voice came out as a squeak. The little door of the lantern swung open on its own. Janelle stumbled backward off the bucket and landed on the grass. She stared as the silver flame lifted from the wick, slow and graceful, and floated out into the evening air. It was the size of her fist now, round and bright and perfectly steady, with no smoke and no flicker. It drifted past her nose. It circled the cottage once, like a curious bird. And then it hovered in front of the kitchen window, glowing against the dark glass as though it were knocking. "Gran!" Janelle shouted. "The light is *leaving*!" The kitchen door banged open. Odalie Halloway stood in the doorway with flour on her apron and a wooden spoon still in her hand. She looked at the silver flame. She looked at Janelle, sitting in the grass with her mouth hanging open. And her face did something Janelle had never seen it do in twelve years. It went pale. The spoon slipped from her fingers and clattered on the step. "Gran?" Janelle whispered. "What is it? What's happening?" For a long moment, Odalie said nothing. Her eyes were fixed on the floating flame, and in them Janelle saw something that looked like grief and something that looked like pride and something underneath both that looked, unmistakably, like fear. Then the old woman drew a long breath, straightened her shoulders, and stepped down into the garden. She walked across the grass slowly, the way a person walks toward an old friend they were hoping not to meet again for a long time. The flame drifted toward her. It circled her once, gently. Gran lifted one trembling hand, and the light brushed her fingertips and then, to Janelle's astonishment, drifted away from her and back toward Janelle. It settled in the air a hand's breadth from Janelle's face. It was warm. It smelled faintly of rain and woodsmoke and something else, something ancient and green, like moss on a very old stone. Odalie let out a breath that was half a laugh and half a sob. "Well," she said. "That settles it. It chose you." "Chose me for what?" Janelle asked. "Inside, child." Gran bent and took Janelle's hand and hauled her up off the grass with surprising strength. Her fingers were cold. "Then it has begun. Come inside. We have much to speak about, and very little time." "But what about the lantern? What about the light?" "The light will follow," said Gran. And she was right. As Janelle was steered toward the kitchen door, the silver flame drifted after them, hovering just over her shoulder like a loyal little ghost. Behind them, the cottage lantern hung empty on its hook, its glass door swinging in the breeze. Across the road, the dark mass of Eldermere Forest seemed to lean closer. The trees rustled in a wind that had not been blowing a moment before, and from deep within them came a sound, very faint and very far away, like something enormous turning over in its sleep. Janelle heard it. She did not know what it was. But a cold shiver ran down her spine, and she walked a little faster. The kitchen door closed behind them with a click. Outside, the last light faded from the sky, and the first stars came out, one by one, as they had every night for nine hundred years. But tonight, for the first time in nine hundred years, the lantern beside the cottage door was dark. And in the depths of the forest, in a place where no sunlight had ever reached, something that had slept for a very long time opened a single, patient eye.