The Lantern Maker’s Gift

When I was a child, I knew a secret that I never told anyone. It wasn’t a secret of words or deeds, but of the air itself. Our house stood at the edge of a town that had long forgotten its own name, a place where the streets were paved with old cobblestones that clicked under the wheels of carts like the teeth of a giant. My room was at the top of the house, a narrow attic with a single round window that stared out over the moors like a great unblinking eye. I was five years old, and I had not yet learned to be afraid.

One night, I woke to a soft hum, as if the house itself were singing. The moon had painted the room in silver, and floating in that light were the lanterns. That’s what I called them in my mind, though they were not made of paper or glass. They were spheres of faintest gray, translucent as smoke, and they pulsed with an inner glow. Some were small, no bigger than a lark’s egg, others as large as my head. They drifted in lazy circles, brushing past my hanging mobile of tin soldiers, causing them to clink softly. I sat up, my nightgown pooling around me, and watched them. I felt no fear, only a deep curiosity, as if I were a naturalist in a foreign land. I reached out, and one of the smaller spheres drifted into my palm. It was cool, like mist, and it tingled the whole length of my arm. It withdrew, trembling, and joined its kin in a slow dance. This went on for several minutes, and then, as if a conductor had lowered his baton, they dimmed and faded, leaving only the moonlight. I lay back down, and in seconds, I was asleep.

That was the first time. The second time was six years later, when we had moved to a different place, a town that had grown around a dormant volcano, its streets sloping up to a dark cone that loomed over everything. We lived in rooms above an old shop that sold clocks and other timepieces. The shop was owned by a man named Mr. Pendleton, who was as old as the town itself, with hands like curled parchment. My new room was small, with a window that looked out onto the volcano’s flank, and in the middle of the night, I woke to a rustling sound, like the turning of pages. I turned my head, and saw at the foot of my bed the silhouette of a man. He wore a hat, not like any I had seen, for it had a flat top and a straight brim, casting his face in shadow. He stood as still as a church spire, and I could hear his breath, slow and steady, as if he had always been there and always would be. I wanted to speak, but my voice was caught somewhere between my ribs and my throat. He raised a hand, and in it, he held one of the gray spheres from my childhood, but this one was dark, like a void. He placed it on my dresser, and then he was gone, and I was alone with the ticking of a thousand clocks from the shop below.

I never spoke of these things, for I had no words for them. As I grew older, I convinced myself they were dreams, the fancies of a child’s mind. I became a woman of reason, a scholar of the natural world. I wrote books under my own name about the habits of moths and the patterns of weather, and I took great pride in being grounded, in having both feet on the earth. When I was asked to write a brief biography for the dust jacket of my latest work, I penned a few lines, including the phrase, ‘I have never seen any apparitions, nor do I believe in them.’ It was a statement of fact, as I had redefined my memories as hallucinations, the products of a developing brain. But the night I sent that manuscript to my publisher, I could not sleep. I lay in my bed, in my apartment in the city, the sounds of traffic a distant murmur, and I thought of those moments. I thought of the spheres, and of the man with the flat-topped hat. And then I noticed a faint glow at the foot of my bed.

It was not a sphere, but a tiny point of light, like a star fallen to the carpet. It pulsed, slowly, then began to drift upwards. As it rose, it grew, becoming a sphere the size of an orange, and then larger. Around it, other points of light appeared, each growing into new spheres, of varying sizes, all gray and translucent. They floated in a slow circle, just as they had in my attic room so many years ago. This time, I was filled with a terror that had been absent in childhood. My heart hammered, and I tried to move, but my limbs were heavy, as if they were buried in sand. The spheres began to close in, their surfaces shimmering with a pattern that I now recognized as the face of the man in the hat, its expression sorrowful. They whispered, and their whispers were not words but the sound of pages turning, the ticking of clocks, the rustle of wind through grass. They brushed against me, and each touch brought a memory, not of my life, but of a life that could have been, a life where I had not denied the unseen. I saw a woman who could speak to the spheres, who understood that they were lanterns for something greater, guides to paths not taken. And I watched that woman fade, as I had become this, a woman who had closed her eyes.

The spheres retreated, melding into one large orb that hovered before me. In its center, I saw a reflection of my own face, but younger, as I had been at eight, with wide eyes and no armor of disbelief. The orb’s surface rippled, and I saw the man again, and he was holding out the dark sphere he had given me all those years ago. It was in my hands now, in the realm of memory, and it was not dark but a deep, bruised purple. He nodded, once, and then the orb vanished, along with all its companions.

I lay in the darkness, breathing hard. I waited for the dawn, and when it came, I got up and went to my desk. I wrote a new biography, one that said, ‘I have seen things that cannot be, and I have lived my life in spite of them.’ I sent it, and I waited. That night, I slept without waking, and for a week, I was haunted by nothing. But on the eighth night, I woke to a single word, written in dust on my window: ‘Remember.’

The lanterns came that night, and the night after, and they come still. They no longer frighten me. I have learned their language, or at least a few words. They are not ghosts, nor spirits, but things that live between the layers of the world, observers of those who choose to see. And I, now, belong to them. I have left my books unfinished, my reputation as a rationalist in tatters, but I have found a new vocation. I am a keeper of the unseen, a collector of the moments that others dismiss. And each night, as I drift among the gray spheres, I am grateful that a child’s curiosity once welcomed them, and that an adult’s denial nearly lost them forever. The man with the flat-topped hat has become my companion, and he tells me that we are all lanterns, if we choose to burn brightly enough. And so I burn, and I light the way for others who are ready to see.