Anwen and the Star Thief's Lantern

Anwen counted the stars the way other children counted sheep. Every clear night she stood at her window and found the same bright ones in the same places. The Plough. The three on the hunter’s belt. The little clutch of seven she called the sisters.

On the first night of autumn, one of the sisters was gone.

She checked twice, then ran down the stairs so fast her socks slipped. “Gran,” she said, “a star has fallen out of the sky. Or been pinched.”

Her grandmother was mending a coat by the fire. She set down her needle very slowly, which Anwen had learned meant a story was coming.

“There is an old tale,” Gran said. “When the nights grow long, a thief walks the hill with a lantern. He catches the smallest stars and carries them off.”

“Why would anyone steal a star?”

“The tale does not say. It only says he has done it forever, and that he leaves a silver dust behind him, and that no one has ever caught him.”

Anwen looked at the window. The gap where the sister had been was dark and clean, like a missing tooth.

“Has anyone tried to catch him?” she asked.

Her grandmother smiled and picked up her needle. “Plenty have tried. None of them thought to be polite.”

That night Anwen could not sleep. She lay listening to the wind, and she thought about the dark gap in the sky, and about being polite.

***

The hill behind the cottage was steeper than it looked in daylight. Anwen climbed it with her coat buttoned to the chin and her breath coming out in little clouds.

She found the dust at the bottom of the path. It lay across the grass in a thin silver line, bright as frost, and it did not melt under her fingers.

“So the tale is true,” she whispered, and followed it.

The trail wound up past the hawthorn tree and the old stone wall. It glittered where the moon touched it. Once she lost it in a patch of bracken and had to kneel and feel about until her hand came away shining.

Near the top, the dust stopped.

A man stood in the hollow of the hill. He wore a long grey coat, and he held a lantern up before him. Inside the lantern, instead of a flame, a dozen tiny stars turned slowly, winking.

Anwen’s heart thumped. She made herself stand still, because running would have been rude, and Gran had said to be polite.

“Excuse me,” she said.

The stranger turned. His face was old and tired, and the lantern light made his eyes look silver.

“You followed the dust,” he said. “Nobody follows the dust.”

“I did,” said Anwen. “You have my star in there.”

The stranger set the lantern down on a flat stone. Its light washed over the grass and made the hill look like the bottom of a deep green sea.

“Sit, if you like,” he said. “It’s a long climb.”

Anwen sat. She kept her eyes on the lantern, where a small star was dipping and rising like a fish.

“Are you the thief?” she asked. “Gran says a thief takes stars out of the sky.”

The man laughed, but it was a dry, tired sort of laugh. “I am the last star-keeper,” he said. “There were twelve of us once. We walked the night and kept the lanterns burning. Now there is only me, and one lantern, and not much time.”

“What happens when the lantern goes out?”

He held up his hand. A thin blue flame sat on his palm, small as a seed. “This is the last true night-flame,” he said. “The others went out one by one. When this one goes, the night goes with it. No dark, no stars, no quiet. Just a grey sky that never rests.”

Anwen thought about the sky over her bed, the deep soft dark she fell asleep under. “The stars in your lantern,” she said. “Why are they in there?”

“They come down when they tire,” said the star-keeper. “I gather them and warm them and send them home. But a star needs a memory to carry it up. A bright one. I have used all of mine.”

He looked at her, and his silver eyes were kind. “That is why I take them from the sky, girl. Not to steal. To save.”

***

Anwen sat very still. The little stars turned in the lantern, slow and patient, and one of them seemed to be waiting for her.

“You have no memories left?” she asked.

“None bright enough,” said the star-keeper. “I have kept the night for so long that my own days have worn thin. A keeper gives his light away, and then he has none.”

Anwen thought hard. She thought about her brightest thing, the one that came to her when the room was dark and she needed to feel brave. It was the summer evening by the sea, when Gran had lifted her onto the harbour wall and the whole sky had gone pink and gold. She could still smell the salt. She could still hear Gran humming.

“I have a bright memory,” she said slowly.

“No,” said the star-keeper at once. “You are young. Keep it.”

“But the night will go out.”

“The night is mine to carry, not yours.”

Anwen stood up. Her knees felt shaky, but her voice was steady. “Gran says a thing you give away is not lost. It is planted.” She held out her hands. “Take it. I want the stars to go home.”

The star-keeper looked at her for a long moment. Then he nodded, and the little blue flame on his palm leaned toward her like a flower turning to the sun.

“Say it out loud,” he said gently. “Tell me the whole of it, and let it go.”

So Anwen closed her eyes and told him about the sea, and the pink sky, and Gran’s humming, and the harbour wall warm under her hands.

The star-keeper listened with his eyes closed. When she finished, he opened them, and they were wet and shining.

“That is a good memory,” he said. “A very good one. Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” said Anwen. Her hands were still out.

He lifted the lantern and pressed it gently against her palms. It was warm, like a cup of tea. For a moment nothing happened. Then Anwen felt something slip out of her, light as a ribbon pulled from a pocket. It did not hurt. It felt like standing in the doorway of a warm house and stepping out into cool air.

The little blue flame inside the lantern flared up, tall and steady, and turned a soft gold.

“Oh,” said Anwen. That was all she could say.

Then the stars began to move. They rose out of the lantern like bees leaving a hive, one after another, then ten, then a hundred. They swirled around the hilltop in a bright, humming river. The wind from their wings pushed Anwen’s hair back from her face. The whole hill was lit up like a fairground.

“Up,” said the star-keeper, and pointed to the sky.

Up they went. They scattered into the dark like seed thrown over a field, and each one found its place and hung there, twinkling. Anwen tipped her head back and watched until her neck ached. The hole she had noticed at the start was filled.

The star-keeper closed the lantern’s little door. The gold flame burned steady behind the glass, small and sure, as if it had always been there.

“It will burn a long time now,” he said. “Your memory is good fuel.”

Anwen touched the warm glass. Somewhere inside it, a summer evening was still going on. She could not reach it anymore, not the way she used to. But it was there, and it was working.

***

Anwen walked home under a full sky. The path down the hill was easy now, silver and clear, and the harbour lights blinked below her. Everything looked the same and not the same. She could not remember the pink of that evening, or the sound of Gran humming. But when she looked up, she knew exactly which stars were hers. She had helped put them there.

Gran was in the kitchen, stirring cocoa.

“You’re late,” she said. “And you’re covered in dust.”

“I went up the hill,” said Anwen. “I saw the stars come back.”

Gran set down the spoon. “Did you now.”

“A man was keeping them in a lantern,” Anwen said. “He was very tired. I gave him something to burn.”

Gran looked at her for a long moment. “What did you give him?”

Anwen thought about it. The sea was still there in her mind, and the wall, and Gran’s hands. But the pink and the gold had gone, and the humming too. “A summer evening,” she said. “Our summer evening. I can’t hear you hum it anymore.”

Gran was quiet. Then she pulled out a chair and sat down. “Well,” she said. “Then I shall have to hum it again, shan’t I.”

And she did, soft and low, while the cocoa steamed, and Anwen found she could still smell the salt.

In the morning there was a small silver star on her windowsill. It was no bigger than a bead and cool as a pebble, and it glowed faintly when she cupped it in her hand. Anwen put it in her pocket and wore it every day.

At night she still counted the stars. She counted them differently now, slower, the way you count something you helped make.