Elara Races the Night to Wake the Sun

Elara woke because the rooster had not crowed. She lay still and listened. No birds sang in the eaves. No cart wheels rattled down the lane. The world was quiet and gray, and it was still night.

She went to the window. The sky above Everdawn was black as a pond. One star blinked near the peak of the Mountain of Dawn, and the moon hung thin and crooked. It had been night for two days now. The bread had gone cold in the oven. The candles were burning down to stubs.

Her mother stood in the kitchen with a shawl around her shoulders. “Eat something,” she said. “Then go to the elder’s house. Everyone is going.”

Elara ate a cold potato and went out. Neighbors crowded the lane with lanterns and torches. Their faces looked strange in the jumping light, tired and worried. Old Maren the elder stood on the well steps, holding up her hand.

“The sun was taken,” she said. “The Night Serpent stole it from the sky and coiled around it on the mountain.”

A murmur ran through the crowd. Elara’s stomach felt tight.

“Can it be taken back?” asked a man near the front.

“There is a way,” said Maren. “The Lantern of First Light. It sleeps in my chest, and it can wake the sun if someone carries it to the summit. But the mountain is dark, child. Dark and long.”

The crowd went quiet. Nobody stepped forward. Elara looked at the black mountain, and her hands were cold, and she thought of her warm bed.

***

Elara stepped out of the crowd. Her knees shook, but her feet stayed put.

“I’ll carry it,” she said.

Her mother caught her arm. “Elara, no. The mountain path is treacherous at night.”

“Someone has to,” said Elara. “I’m small. I can climb fast.”

Maren looked at her for a long moment. Then she nodded and went into her house. When she came back, she carried a small brass lantern, no bigger than a pear. A tiny flame burned inside it, blue at the edges, gold in the middle.

“Never let it go out,” Maren said. “Not for one breath. If it dies, the sun dies with it.”

Elara took the lantern. It was warm in her hands.

Tobin pushed through the crowd. He was her best friend, and his eyes were red from staying awake. He pressed something into her palm. A small gray stone, smooth as river glass.

“My lucky stone,” he said. “I found it the day I wasn’t afraid of the dark anymore.”

“You’re still afraid of the dark,” Elara said.

“I know,” said Tobin. “But it worked anyway. Take it.”

Elara put the stone in her pocket. She looked up at the Mountain of Dawn. The path was a thin black line in the black rock. She was afraid, more afraid than she had ever been.

“I’ll come back,” she said.

“You’d better,” said Tobin. “I’ll be waiting right here.”

Elara lifted the lantern and started walking toward the mountain.

The path climbed steeply. Elara kept her eyes on her feet because the dark pressed close on every side. The lantern made a small circle of gold, and outside that circle the world was black.

After a while she heard something. A soft, sliding sound, like a rope dragged over stone.

“Hello, little light-bringer,” said a voice.

Elara stopped. A shape stood on the path ahead of her. It was tall and thin, made of shadow, and its edges blurred into the night.

“Who are you?” Elara asked.

“A friend of the mountain,” said the shadow. “I know every stone of this path. You look tired. Let me guide you.”

Elara held the lantern tighter. “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Why would I lie?” said the shadow. It drifted forward, and the path curved to the right. “This way. It’s much shorter.”

The path did look smoother. Elara followed. The shadow talked as it went, about the cold and the dark, and how nice it would be to rest.

“Just a little farther,” it said. “There’s a fine flat rock ahead.”

Elara took another step. Then she stopped.

The ground ahead of her fell away. She could feel the wind rising from below, cold and empty. There was no rock. There was no path. There was only a cliff.

“You tricked me,” she said.

The shadow laughed, low and thin. “The sun is gone, child. Stay in the dark with us.”

Elara turned and ran back the way she had come. Her foot caught a stone, and she fell hard. Her knee scraped against the rock, and the pain made her gasp.

She got up. She did not look back. The shadow’s laugh faded behind her, and she climbed the true path again, slower now, with her knee stinging and her breath ragged.

***

The wind grew stronger near the top. It came down the mountain in long, cold gusts, and each one made the lantern flame dip.

Elara cupped her hands around the glass. “Stay,” she whispered. “Please stay.”

A gust hit her like a wave. The flame bent sideways, shrank to a blue thread, and almost went out. Elara threw herself over the lantern, curling around it on the ground. The wind pulled at her cloak and her hair.

The flame shivered. It was no bigger than a seed now.

Then Elara remembered. She reached into her pocket and found Tobin’s stone, smooth and cold.

“It worked anyway,” she said out loud. “He said it worked anyway.”

She held the stone near the tiny flame and struck it against the lantern’s brass edge. Nothing. She struck again, and a spark jumped, small and bright.

The spark caught. The flame grew, blue at the edges, gold in the middle, just as it had been.

Elara sat up slowly. Her knee throbbed. Her hands were scraped. But the light was steady in the lantern, and the wind had dropped.

She stood and looked up. Above her, the path ended at the summit, where a ring of standing stones stood black against the sky.

“I’m coming,” she said. She did not know if she meant it for the sun or for Tobin. She climbed on, and the lantern burned warm in her hand.

Elara climbed the last stretch with her breath loud in her ears. The path was narrow here, no wider than a dinner plate. On either side, the mountain fell away into dark. She kept her eyes on the lantern and her feet on the stones.

The standing stones grew taller as she came. There were nine of them, gray and worn, leaning like old teeth. Inside the ring, the ground was flat and smooth. And there, in the middle, the sun lay sleeping.

Elara stopped. She had never seen the sun up close. It was smaller than she had imagined, no bigger than a cart wheel, and it gave off a faint orange glow like coals under ash. It did not burn her. It only breathed, slow and deep, in and out.

“It’s real,” she whispered. “It’s really here.”

She stepped between two stones. The air inside the ring was warm, the first warm air she had felt since the night began. The sky above was still black, but the stars seemed to lean in close, watching.

Elara set the lantern down beside the sleeping sun. Her hands were shaking. The elder had taught her the words on the night she left, and she had said them over and over on the climb, until they felt like a song she had always known.

She lifted the lantern high. Its light fell across the sun’s face, gold on gold.

“Wake,” she said. Her voice came out small. She tried again, louder.

“Wake, First Light. Your village is waiting. The bread is unbaked. The roosters are confused. The children are tired of candles.”

She felt silly. Then she felt the ground tremble.

The sun stirred. A line of light cracked along its side, thin as a hair, then wider. Warmth rolled out of it like water from a tipped jug. Elara held the lantern steady, though her arms ached.

“Wake,” she said one more time. “Please.”

The sun opened like an eye.

***

Light poured over the standing stones. It spilled down the mountain in long gold rivers. Elara had to shut her eyes. Even through her lids, everything turned red and warm.

When she opened them, the sky was blue. Real blue, morning blue. Below her, the village of Everdawn was waking. She could hear roosters, faint and far away, and a dog barking, and someone laughing.

The sun rose slow and easy above the ring, as if it had only been resting and not stolen at all. Elara watched until her neck hurt.

By the time she climbed down, the path was bright and ordinary. Her knee still ached. Her hands were still scraped. But she did not need the lantern anymore, and she carried it anyway, unlit, against her chest.

Tobin was waiting at the foot of the mountain. He was sitting on a fence post, swinging his legs, and he jumped down the moment he saw her.

“You did it,” he said. “I knew you would. Everyone’s out. My mother’s making bread. Actual bread, with the oven.”

Elara laughed. It came out wobbly.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out his stone. It was warm now, warm from her hand.

“Here,” she said. “It worked anyway.”

Tobin took it and turned it over. “It’s got a scratch on it.”

“I hit it against the lantern.”

“Good,” he said, and put it back in his pocket like it was worth more now.

They walked home together through the waking streets. People were opening shutters and shading their eyes against the light. Elara kept the lantern tucked under her arm, and somewhere inside her chest, small and steady, a piece of its light stayed burning.

“Same time tomorrow?” Tobin asked.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “the sun can do it alone.”