Moth and Lantern

Odile made lanterns in a cottage at the edge of the Elderwood, where the trees were older than the kingdom and the paths changed when you were not looking. She was a practical woman of thirty-five with burn scars on her fingers and no patience for stories.

So when a man with wings like grey velvet landed on her windowsill one summer night, drawn by the light of her workshop, she put down her soldering iron and said, 'Absolutely not.'

He looked hurt. 'I only want to sit near the light,' he said. 'I'll give you something for it.'

'Such as?'

'A secret. A true one. The forest has a great many.'

It was, she had to admit, an interesting offer. She let him in.

He sat by her lantern-filled workbench all night, wings folded, face tilted to the glow, and told her secrets. Where the stream went underground. Why the owls stopped singing in the year of the long frost. Which of the old oaks still dreamed. She found herself listening with her chin in her hands, the soldering iron forgotten.

He came back the next night. And the next. She started leaving the window open.

On the seventh night she made him a lantern of his own, blown glass the colour of moonlight, and when she handed it to him their fingers touched and neither of them pulled away.

'That's not a fair trade,' he said softly. 'I haven't told you a secret tonight.'

'Then tell me one,' Odile said.

He leaned close, wings brushing her shoulders, and whispered it against her lips. She never told anyone what it was. But the lanterns in her workshop burned all night.