The Lantern Keeper

No one had lived in the Hollow Vale for generations yet sometimes, when the fog rolled thick and the trees groaned in the wind, villagers swore they saw a light dancing among the twisted trunks. Some called it a ghost. Others called it a trick of the mist. Those who had seen it whispered the name of the one who carried it: the Lantern Keeper.

Seris was small and pale, with hair like ash and eyes that glimmered like silver threads. She moved through the Vale as if she belonged to its shadows. Owls watched her silently, their amber eyes reflecting the lantern’s glow. The crows curtsied from gnarled branches. Even the wind seemed to shift around her, curling in ribbons that whispered secrets too faint for human ears.

She had lived in the Vale for as long as she could remember though she did not remember how she came to be there. The trees told her everything she needed to know, guiding her through hidden paths, beneath roots that curled like ancient fingers, past hollows glowing with phosphorescent moss. Her lantern never dimmed, a green flame that floated beside her, illuminating the unseen and the forgotten.

One night, the fog thickened into a rolling tide, swallowing the moon and stars. Seris followed a sound, a soft sobbing that seemed to come from the heart of the forest. She moved silently, barefoot, over moss and stone, until she reached a clearing where the shadows twisted unnaturally.

In the center sat a boy no older than twelve, shivering in a threadbare cloak, his hands pressed to his face. His tears sparkled in the lantern’s eerie glow. “I… I got lost,” he whispered. “I can’t find the way home.”

Seris tilted her head, her expression unreadable. “The Vale does not give up its paths lightly,” she said. Her voice was soft yet commanding, like the rustle of leaves before a storm. “Why have you come here?”

“I… I saw the light,” he stammered. “I thought someone was… watching over me.”

“Someone is,” she replied, floating the lantern closer. The green flame flickered and danced over the boy’s tear-streaked face. “But the Vale tests the brave, the foolish and the lost.”

For hours they wandered, Seris leading silently, the lantern floating ahead like a tiny sun. Shadows stretched and lunged around them. Roots curled like fingers, as if trying to trip the boy, but Seris’s presence was a shield. Bats swooped from the canopy above, wings slicing the darkness yet they never harmed. Wolves howled in the distance, voices echoing like warnings yet none drew closer.

Finally they reached the edge of the Hollow Vale, where the fog thinned and the first hint of dawn painted the sky in pale lavender. The boy blinked, astonished to find the forest behind him endless and silent once more.

“Thank you,” he said, clutching his cloak. “I… I thought I would never find my way.”

Seris smiled faintly, a ghost of a grin that vanished almost immediately. “Remember,” she whispered, “the forest remembers all who wander through it. Some paths you can return to. Some paths you cannot.”

Before he could reply, she turned, fading into the mist, the green lantern bobbing once like a heartbeat, and then gone. The Hollow Vale was silent again, holding its secrets, waiting for the next soul brave enough or foolish enough to wander into its shadows.