The Lantern in the Frost

In the low hills beyond the last paved road, where the birch trees grow crooked and the wind sounds like a woman humming, there is a spring that never freezes. Beside it, half-swallowed by moss and root, lie the tumbled bricks of a cottage that collapsed before the first map of our county was ever drawn. My grandmother told me the story when I was small, and I never forgot it: a woman named Elsbeth, who came to these woods in the year the barley failed twice, and built her home from stones pulled out of the river. She was thin as a rake, with eyes the color of old pennies, and she gathered herbs that no one else could find. The farmers said she was a witch, but they still came to her when their children sickened or their cows would not give milk, and she always had a remedy – bitter teas, poultices of crushed leaves, a tincture that smelled of rain on hot rock. She asked for nothing but bread and salt, and sometimes a cup of milk. She died one winter, or so the story goes, when the snow came early and buried her door. They found her frozen in her chair, a lantern cold in her lap. And ever since, on the coldest nights, people walking past the spring swear they see a flickering light moving among the trees, and a shadow that glides without sound.

I did not believe it, not really. I was born in the new age, when the town had grown fat on coal and the old stories were just words. But that autumn I was training for a race, and I liked to run the old road that skirts the woods, because it was quiet and the ground was soft with fallen leaves. I had started late, the clock on the courthouse tower showing a quarter past four, and the sun was already dipping behind the ridge, spilling orange light across the fields. By the time I reached the turnoff to the spring, twilight had thickened into dusk, and the cold had crept down from the hills, bringing a smell of woodsmoke and something sweet, like rotting apples. I told myself I would turn around at the spring and head home, but as I rounded the bend, I saw it – a faint glow, amber and unsteady, moving through the trees on the far side of the clearing. My heart gave a stupid lurch. I knew it was probably a hiker with a flashlight, or some kid messing around. But the light did not bob; it swayed, low to the ground, and it moved with a smooth, deliberate pace, as if the bearer were gliding over the frozen marsh instead of walking.

I should have turned back then. But I was young and stubborn, and I had never been one to run from a shadow. So I left the road and crossed the field, my footsteps crunching through frost-hardened grass. The air grew colder as I neared the treeline, and the light disappeared. I stopped, breathing hard, listening. The wind had died, and the silence pressed in like a held breath. That was when I heard the sound: a low, rhythmic scraping, like a shovel being dragged over stone, coming from the direction of the spring. I crept forward, my boots slipping on the wet leaves, until I could see the white glint of water in the gloom. And there, kneeling beside the spring, was the figure. It was a woman, or what was left of one – dressed in a long coat that hung stiff with frost, her face hidden beneath a hood. She was not drinking; she was dipping a tin cup into the water, over and over, and pouring it back, as if she were washing something that would not come clean. A lantern sat on a flat stone beside her, its flame burning a sickly yellow, and it cast no light beyond a few inches, leaving her in a pool of mottled darkness.

I must have made a sound – a twig snapping, or a sharp intake of breath – because she turned her head, and for a moment I saw her face. It was not a face that could belong to a living thing. The skin was like old parchment stretched over bone, and the eyes were the color of a pond that has gone stagnant, rimmed with dark. She smiled, and her lips cracked, but no sound came out. Instead, she raised one hand, and in it she held a small glass vial, filled with a dark liquid. She gestured toward me, a slow beckoning, and I felt my legs move of their own accord, my feet dragging through the dead leaves as if the earth itself was pulling me toward her. I tried to yell, but my throat closed. I tried to run, but the muscles in my legs would not obey. And as I stumbled closer, I could smell it – a scent like bitter almonds and wet earth, the smell she must have worn in life, the smell of a healer who knew too many secrets of the body. She held out the vial, and I saw that it was not soil or old wine inside, but a clear liquid that fizzed with tiny bubbles, and I knew without knowing how I knew that it was the water from the spring, but transformed, made potent by her long dead hands.

I would have taken it. I would have drunk it, I think, if my mind had not caught on a single detail: the lantern beside her, which had gone out. It was a simple thing, made of tin and glass, but the glass was dark, blackened with soot, and I realized it was not a lantern at all – it was an old bottle, its neck broken, its sides crusted with something that glimmered like salt. And in that moment, my own living breath, white in the cold, clouded the air between us, and the spell broke. I stumbled backward, tripped over a root, and fell. When I looked up, she was gone. The lantern was gone. Only the spring remained, its surface undisturbed, reflecting the first stars of evening. I scrambled to my feet and ran – not caring where, only away – and I did not stop until I burst out onto the road, my lungs burning, my cheeks wet with tears I had not felt falling.

I never ran that way again. No one I told believed me, though the older folk grew quiet when I spoke, and my grandmother, who had been sick that winter, looked at me with a strange pity. ‘What did you see, child?’ she asked, and when I told her, she closed her eyes and said nothing for a long time. Finally, she said, ‘She only shows herself to those who need her medicine. The question is, what were you sick with?’ I did not have an answer. But that night, I dreamed of the spring, and of the vial she had held out, and I woke with a thirst that no amount of water could quench. It has been decades since that autumn, and I have never gone back to the woods. But sometimes, on the coldest nights, I see a light moving on the edge of town, and I think of her, and I wonder if the day will come when I am sick enough to take what she offers. And I know, with a certainty that settles in my bones like frost, that when that day comes, I will not be able to refuse.