The Lantern Keeper of Hollow Bridge

At the hour when clocks forget to tick and the moon hangs so low it nearly touches the rooftops, there lives an old woman on Hollow Bridge who tends a lantern that has never gone out.

They say the flame inside is not fire at all, but the last breath of a sleeping dragon, caught in glass a thousand years ago. The light it casts is not golden or orange but a deep, shimmering violet — the color of the sky just before the stars decide to appear. And if you watch it long enough, you can see shapes moving inside: tiny wings, curling tails, eyes that blink once and then are still.

On this particular night — a night when the fog rose thick from the river and wrapped around the village like a wool blanket — a boy named Elias could not sleep.

He had tried everything. He had counted the knots in the wooden ceiling above his bed. He had listened to the slow breathing of his grandmother in the next room. He had even whispered to the moth that kept bumping against his window, asking it politely to tell him a boring story. But the moth only fluttered and said nothing, as moths tend to do when they are busy with glass.

So Elias put on his coat and his too-big boots and slipped out through the back door, into the silver-grey world outside.

The village was asleep. Every window was dark. Every chimney had stopped breathing smoke. Even the old rooster on the Mirovic farm, who normally crowed at every shadow, was silent, his head tucked beneath his wing. The only sound was the river, murmuring beneath the stones of Hollow Bridge like someone talking in their sleep.

And there — at the center of the bridge — burned the violet lantern.

Elias had seen it a hundred times from his window, but he had never walked to it at night. His grandmother had told him not to. "The Lantern Keeper does not like visitors after dark," she had said, in the voice she used for things that were not quite warnings and not quite stories. "She has her work to do."

But tonight the lantern seemed to pulse, gently, like a heartbeat, and Elias felt it pulling him forward the way the moon pulls the tide — not with force, but with patience.

He walked to the center of the bridge.

The old woman was there, sitting on a three-legged stool beside the lantern. She was wrapped in a shawl the color of dried lavender, and her hair was white and wild, like smoke frozen in place. In her lap sat a cat — no, two cats — no, it was hard to tell. The shadows around her seemed to have ears and tails, and now and then a pair of green eyes would blink open in the darkness beneath her stool and then vanish again.

"You cannot sleep," she said, without looking up.

"No," said Elias.

"That is because you have a question that has not been asked yet. Unasked questions are the worst kind of insomnia."

Elias considered this. He did feel as though something had been sitting in his chest all evening, something round and heavy, like a stone with words inside it.

"I don't know what the question is," he admitted.

"Then you will have to go and find it." The old woman reached into the folds of her shawl and drew out a small glass vial. Inside it, something glowed — a tiny shard of the violet flame, no bigger than a firefly. "Take this. It will light your way. But you must follow the river downstream until you reach the Whispering Willow. She will know your question, even if you do not."

Elias took the vial. It was warm in his hand, and the light inside it hummed, very softly, like a lullaby sung from far away.

He walked off the bridge and followed the river.

The path was narrow and mossy, and the mist curled around his ankles like affectionate cats. Above him, the stars were half-hidden behind thin clouds, blinking in and out as if they were playing a game of hide-and-seek with the darkness. The trees along the bank were old and gnarled, their branches reaching over the water like arms trying to embrace their own reflections.

After a while, Elias heard something.

It was not the river. It was not the wind. It was a voice — thin and papery, like the sound of someone turning the pages of a very old book.

"Who walks by my roots at the dreaming hour?"

Elias looked up. Before him stood the largest willow tree he had ever seen. Its trunk was as wide as a cottage, and its branches fell in long silver curtains that brushed the surface of the water. The leaves shimmered in the violet light from his vial, and each one, he realized, was shaped like a tiny closed eye.

"I'm Elias," he said. "The Lantern Keeper sent me. She said you would know my question."

The willow rustled. Its branches swayed, though there was no wind. Deep in the trunk, something creaked — the sound of old wood remembering.

"Ah," said the tree. "Yes. I can see it. It is curled up in your chest like a sleeping mouse. Shall I wake it?"

"Please."

The willow lowered one long branch until its tip touched Elias's forehead, light as a moth's wing. And suddenly the question was there, clear and bright in his mind, as if it had been waiting for permission.

"I want to know," Elias whispered, "why my mother left, and whether she thinks of me when the stars come out."

The willow was quiet for a long time. The river sang its low, slow song. A fish leaped once and fell back into the dark water with barely a sound.

Then the tree spoke again, and its voice was gentler now, like the rustling of a quilt being pulled up to a child's chin.

"Come closer, little one. Look into the water beneath my branches."

Elias knelt at the riverbank and looked down. The water was black and smooth as a mirror, and in it he saw — not his own reflection, but something else. A room. A small room with a window, and beyond the window, the same stars that hung above him now. A woman sat at a desk, her dark hair falling over her face, and she was writing a letter. Her hand moved slowly, carefully, and even though Elias could not read the words, he could see that the ink shimmered violet, the same violet as the lantern on the bridge.

"She writes to you every night," the willow said. "But the letters are made of light, and they travel not by post but by starshine. Every time you see a star blink, that is one of her words arriving."

"But I can't read them," Elias said, and his voice was very small.

"You are not meant to read them. You are meant to feel them. They settle on you while you sleep, like snow, like warmth, like the memory of a song. Every morning when you wake and feel, for just a moment, that everything is going to be all right — that is her letter, already read by your heart."

Elias sat very still. The stone in his chest did not dissolve — it would always be there, he knew — but it felt lighter now, as if someone had carved a window in it, and through that window, light was pouring in.

"Thank you," he said.

The willow lifted its branch from his forehead and swayed back into its silver curtain of leaves. "Go home now, little dreamer. Your bed is waiting, and the night is not yet finished with its work."

Elias walked back along the river. The mist had thinned, and the stars seemed brighter now, blinking in a pattern he had never noticed before — quick, slow, quick, quick, slow — like a code, like a message, like someone far away saying, again and again, I am here, I am here, I am here.

When he reached the bridge, the Lantern Keeper was still there. The cats — or shadows — around her feet purred like small, warm engines.

"Did you find your question?" she asked.

"I found the question and the answer."

"Good. Then you will sleep now." She took the vial from his hand and poured its tiny flame back into the lantern. The violet light flared once, beautifully, and then settled back to its steady, ancient pulse.

"Will the letters keep coming?" Elias asked.

"Every night," said the old woman. "For as long as the stars remember how to blink."

Elias walked home. He took off his coat and his too-big boots. He climbed into bed and pulled the quilt up to his chin. Outside his window, the stars blinked — quick, slow, quick, quick, slow — and the moth had finally stopped bumping against the glass and was resting on the sill, its wings folded like two small hands pressed together in prayer.

And Elias slept.

He slept deeply and well, the way rivers sleep beneath winter ice — still on the surface, but flowing, always flowing, underneath. And in his dreams, the letters came, one by one, written in violet light, settling over him like the softest, warmest snow the world has ever known.

On Hollow Bridge, the lantern burned on.

It had burned for a thousand years, and it would burn for a thousand more — tended by the old woman who never slept, who kept watch over the dreaming village, who knew every unasked question and every answer hiding in the dark.

And if you ever find yourself awake at the hour when clocks forget to tick, and you look out your window and see a violet light burning in the distance — do not be afraid.

It is only the Lantern Keeper, doing her gentle, endless work.

And somewhere, someone is writing you a letter made of stars.