Lanterns

A hollow acorn the size of a fist. Something small lived in it once, and left a light on.

A brass night-lamp with ruby glass and a hood over its back, so the stars stay bright while you read the chart.

A white birdcage with a candle inside. The little bird on top stayed anyway.

An empty wine bottle, a candle and a twist of wire.

A slipper-shaped oil lamp on three thin chains. Rub it if you like. Nothing happens.

No glass, just black bars around a stubborn candle.

Three candles melted into one, still burning.

Six pointed windows under a little spire, like a chapel on a hill.

An oil lamp of baked clay, swinging in a rope sling.

Taken off a carriage that stopped at midnight and never set off again.

A squat red kerosene lamp that smells of the docks.

A fisherman's glass float in a knotted rope net, glowing like the sea at night.

A dried gourd carved with swirls of tiny holes.

A tall brass lantern around a candle striped one band per hour. Someone pushed a pin into the next stripe, so the falling wax would wake them.

A tall glass chimney on a brass foot. It shrugs off wind and rain.

A winter-cherry husk dried thin as paper, with a berry-round candle burning where the berry used to be.

A plain iron lantern. Every wanderer gets one.

The head of an old street lamp, taken down the night the streets went dark.

The Hollowgate tavern's last pewter tankard, lid thrown back and a tallow stub burning inside. It was still lit when the landlord called time for the final night.

A glass jar, a tea light and a twist of twine. Someone made this on a porch.

Built for dark tunnels. The pit is just another tunnel.

Warm light through thin paper and bamboo ribs.

Light leaks out through rows of punched stars.

A signal lamp from a line no train runs on anymore.

Flaking rust, a cracked pane and a flame that refuses to die.

A rough chunk of rose rock salt in an iron cradle, with a candle burning inside it. The whole stone glows like a coal.

Rice paper stretched over a square wooden lattice. The light comes through soft and even.

An alchemist's burner: a squat glass bulb of spirit in a brass sling, burning with a clean blue flame.

Horn panes and a gabled roof, built to hang in a barn.

A tiny stone garden lantern on a rope. Much too heavy to carry, and yet.

An old tin can punched full of holes. The light gets out in little stars.

A round tin hurricane lamp, dented from years on the road.

A night watchman carried this on his rounds. The rounds never ended.

A length of bamboo with a window cut in its side. A few leaves are still growing out of it.

A ship's lantern of polished brass and ribbed glass.

A harbour buoy small enough to carry. Its light still blinks for ships that never come.

A glass candy corn lit from inside. It smells faintly of sugar.

A navigator's sky in a ball of midnight glass, its constellations picked out in gold. It turns, slowly, with the real one.

A water clock: a bronze bowl lets glowing water drip, one drop a second, into the glass below. When it is full, an hour is gone.

A sliver of moon with a star hanging from its tip on a silver thread.

A bronze bell that rings with fire instead of sound.

A round brazier of glowing coals, spitting sparks.

A jar of fireflies that never needs opening.

A cold blue flame, hung with icicles. Snow drifts from it even indoors.

Where lightning struck the dunes, the sand melted into a branching tube of glass. This one still crackles.

A glowing mushroom that drifts spores wherever it goes.

A wicker basket of firelight. Autumn leaves fall around it.

A glowing beehive. Two bees never stop circling it.

A harlequin lantern of wine-red and ivory diamonds. Its three fool's points end in little bells that ring when nobody is laughing.

Three books nobody ever returned to the lost library, strapped together with a candle on top. Somebody was reading by it when the town went quiet - their spectacles are still hooked on the strap.

A paper lotus that should be floating down a river. It floats beside you instead.

Pierced brass and jewel-coloured glass, carried in from a market that only opens at night.

Overgrown with moss. Fireflies follow it everywhere.

A nautilus shell washed up glowing. Hold it close and you can hear the sea.

A carved wooden owl on a branch. Its eyes glow, and it is definitely awake.

Three red-lacquered roofs, three glowing floors, and a bell at every corner.

A pitcher plant hanging from its own tendril, half full of glowing nectar. The lid lifts when it thinks nobody is looking.

Three corked potions on a little oak rack, each glowing its own colour. Nobody remembers which one was the cure.

A little grey cloud that follows you around and rains on nobody in particular.

Driftwood and sea glass. It still smells of salt.

A chamberstick still wearing the nightcap of whoever carried it down the stairs asleep. Its flame always leans toward the door.

Shake it and it snows on a tiny cabin with one window still lit.

Navy tin cut with stars, for nights with no sky.

A whole tiny garden under glass, lit by one glowing mushroom.

A lantern that grew leathery wings. It flaps them when it thinks nobody is looking.

A belfry with a bronze bell that swings by itself. Every swing is one more lost hour.

Gothic arches of red glass that turn every shadow the colour of the moon.

A music-box carousel. Four little horses go round and round under a striped canopy.

Cobwebs inside, and the spider that spun them bobbing on its thread below.

Someone caught a comet in a birdcage. It still flies its old orbit, round and round, its tail brushing the bars.

A dandelion clock that glows from the heart. It turns in the breeze, and every so often a wish drifts loose.

A glass lamp sitting on the heart of a clock: the escape wheel, the rocking anchor and a pendulum, all out in the open, letting the hours out one tick at a time.

Two goldfish circle a glowing pebble. They have no idea they are a lantern.

Somebody caught a little ghost. It drifts round and round, and it's not sure it wants to leave.

Three silver rings spinning on three different axes around a ball of blue light.

A balloon the size of your head, with a basket, a burner and two little sandbags swinging below.

The sand glows as it falls. It never runs out.

A grinning pumpkin with a candle for a brain.

A garden snail on a mossy twig, carrying its home and its light on its back. It is in no hurry at all.

A tiny lighthouse whose beam sweeps round and round.

A copper lightning rod with its cobalt glass ball, a wind-cup spinner and a weather arrow. Storms come to it on purpose.

Three candles on slowly turning arms, taken from a ballroom nobody left.

A walnut metronome hung by its tip. The amber weight on its arm is the light, and it swings to a tempo nobody set.

The great amber moon of the harvest, brought home in a wicker basket with the last sheaf of the field. Moths follow it everywhere.

A glass globe the moths can't stop circling.

Open the lid and a tiny dancer spins in the light. The tune is one nobody remembers.

A compass in a swinging brass gimbal. The needle never points north - it points at the next round.

A pocket watch as big as your hand, lid thrown open. Its hands never stop, and they never agree.

An onion-domed iron cage from the Hollowgate rookery. The door was left open years ago; the raven just never saw a reason to go, and swings on its perch above the candle, keeping watch.

A banded giant of a world, small enough to carry, with a great storm turning on its face and a ring of glowing ice that rocks as you walk.

The ringmaster's own hat, with a band of amber windows and a candle where his head should be. Now and then the lid lifts to see who is watching.

A cairn of hewn stones that forgot how to stack. They hang in the air around a captured ember, turning slowly, their marks burning amber.

A schooner in a corked bottle, still riding a storm that ended a hundred years ago. Its stern lamp has never gone out.

Someone's last thought still burns behind its eyes.

A round lantern with a hairy black spider squatting on the cap. Its legs twitch when you walk.

A caged eye that never blinks. It is always looking at someone.

A glass bulb of light ringed by silver chimes that swing and sing on their own.

A little windmill with a light in every window. Its sails turn even when the air is still.

The skull of a deep-sea angler. Its lure still glows, still waiting.

The northern lights, folded up and kept in a glass.

It still beats. Nobody knows whose it was.

A scrap of nebula under a bell jar, still busy making a star. Its clouds swirl and glow, and you can watch the newborn sun flicker into life.

A living nautilus with a shell of clear glass. Every chamber it has ever outgrown is still full of light, wall after wall, all the way to the centre.

A ticking brass gear winds the flame, one second at a time.

A golden songbird wound by a key in its back, in an onion-domed cage. Its heart is a green jewel, and it sings a song from an hour that never happened.

A nursery mobile that never stops turning: three woolly sheep, a sleepy moon in a nightcap and a cloud, circling a glowing lamp. Nobody has ever reached the fourth sheep.

A floating shard of violet crystal, held by iron claws.

A cuckoo clock that keeps no time anyone recognises. The bird pops out whenever it feels like it.

A dragonfly hovering on a silver thread, holding up a dewdrop that caught the morning and never let it go.

It catches bad dreams in its web and turns them into soft violet light.

A star that fell on the island, still stuck in its own smoking crater. Someone wrapped the whole thing in iron claws and carries it about.

A fortune booth from a pier that is no longer there. The cards still deal themselves around it, and the ball already knows your name.

A paper lantern with fox ears and a painted grin. Three blue foxfires chase each other around it.

On the coldest night of the year the moon froze solid, and someone chipped it out of the sky still glowing. An aurora keeps it company.

A flame caught mid-flicker and frozen into a column of blue ice. It is still burning in there, and the ice is not melting.

A jade chrysalis stitched with gold, hanging from a twig and glowing with whatever is waiting inside. Two butterflies keep watch.

One of the Hourmonger's wares: an apothecary jar, stoppered and sealed, with three of somebody's hours drifting inside. The tag says what they cost. Don't ask whose they were.

A glowing jellyfish that drifts at your side, pulsing slowly, trailing its tentacles through the air.

A ship's lamp pulled up from the deep, still in the grip of the thing that took it down.

A volcanic geode split down the middle and lined with crystals that never cooled. It yawns open, slowly, to let the heat out.

A molten heart in a cage of cooling rock. It beats, and every beat the rocks glow a little hotter.

A sealed philosopher's egg: red tincture simmering in its base, white vapour curling up, a gold spark being born between them. An emerald serpent circles it forever, biting its own tail.

The spinning heart of a dead star, no bigger than a marble, sweeping two blades of light around the room like a lighthouse gone mad.

Five rune stones circle a floating shard of light, each rune burning with an old, patient power.

A seer's crystal on a silver stand. Mist turns inside it, and little glass visions drift around it, each showing somewhere you have not been yet.

A smoked-glass cube balanced on its corner, every face burning with a sigil. Inside it a golden cube turns the other way around a spark that will not sit still.

A hanging pot of hungry flytraps with glowing mouths. One firefly keeps circling, much too close.

A captured soul circles inside, looking for a way out.

Lightning trapped in glass, crackling to get out.

A copper coil under glass that throws lightning at its own cage. Do not lick it.

A whole little still on a balance beam: green brew boiling in the flask, vapour rising through the copper head, and one bright drop at a time falling into the receiver.

A circus tent no bigger than a lampshade, lit from inside by a burning hoop. The show is always about to start, and the searchlights never stop looking for the crowd.

A slate sundial that brings its own sun. The little sun circles the dial all day and night, and the shadow it throws keeps time for nobody but you.

The town well, roof, winch and all. Its water glows a deep ghostly green, the winch still turns, and something small keeps peeking over the rim to see who has come for a drink.

The Hourmonger's own scales. One pan holds a stolen hour, the other a pile of gold, and the beam never quite makes up its mind which is worth more.

An oval portrait from the Hollowgate manor, lit by its own two sconces. The lady in it is carved in pale stone, and her head turns, slowly, to follow whoever carries her.

Wind the key and a dancer turns under the glass with a partner who is not quite there. The brass drum below plays a waltz from a ballroom that burned down.

A tall glass cloche draped in black lace, a dried rose pinned at its collar and a locket swinging beneath. Someone in Hollowgate kept it lit for a sweetheart who never came home.

A parlour zoetrope that spins by the heat of its own lamp. Look through the slits and a ball bounces for ever on the inside of the drum.

Somebody caught a twister in a birdcage. It roars round and round inside, chewing on splinters and leaves.

A little skiff that sails the dark beyond the island on sails of starlight, its oars rowing at nothing and a caught star swinging from its bow.

The Hollowgate manor's candelabra has burned for so long its wax hangs below it like a beard of icicles. Its three candles burn cold and green now, and they never get any shorter.

A hanging glass basin with a whirlpool spinning in it. The water drains through the bottom in a twisting rope and never runs out.

A little cauldron that never stops bubbling. Don't drink it.

An astronomer's armillary of graduated brass. Its rings turn about a tiny burning sun while two planets run their courses on wire arms.

The Hollowgate smithy's pot-bellied forge, still roaring with nobody at it. Its bellows pump by themselves, the coals flare with every breath, and now and then it throws up a fountain of sparks.

A whole volcanic island on three iron straps, sea and all. The crater glows, lava runs to the water, and now and then it throws fire at the sky.

A dragon's claw clutching the eye of the dragon. Sometimes it still breathes fire.

An old horned owl keeping watch from the top of a hollow log, where something warm is burning. It sees everything, and it remembers.

Living branches grown into a cage around a glowing seed. It flowers wherever it is carried.

A black hole held in a cage of three iron ribs, its burning disc whirling round a hole in the world. A little star is being pulled in, slowly, forever. Sometimes it takes a breath and swallows the light around you.

A golden scarab rolling the sun across the sky, its wings beating in the heat. When it lands, the sand rises.

A pearl from the mouth of the leviathan, in a giant clam that opens and closes like it is breathing. Now and then the tide rises around it.

A jellyfish that swallowed the moon and never let it go. Its long frilled arms twist in a current nobody else can feel, and its baby never strays far.

The red stone itself, held in a turning gimbal of circle, square and triangle. Lumps of lead circle it, and come round the other side as gold.

A flame that dies and is reborn in a burst of fire.

The crowned head of the Pumpkin King. Every so often it bursts into a shower of flaming seeds.

It hangs from a reaper's scythe and gathers the souls that drift too close.

A sandglass from a caravan city where the wind blows the sand back up instead of letting it fall. Its silk streamers never stop flying.

A whale that swims through the air in slow circles around its globe of light. Sometimes it sings, and a much bigger one answers.

A blacksmith hammers a fallen star on an anvil the size of a thumb. Every few blows it rings out like a bell.

A thundercloud on a chain with a storm trapped in a glass globe beneath it. Every so often it lets the lightning out.

The gas lamp from the corner of Hollowgate's high street, snapped off with its bracket and a stub of post. It still flickers in the rain, moths still circle it, and the little ghost that lives in the glass sometimes puts it out.

A carved forest tower with no clock in it at all. Its lantern-bearers parade round the balcony, the black cuckoo calls whenever it likes, and in the nest below something that is not its egg is glowing.

The stern lamp of a ship that sank with all hands. Barnacles, coral and a crab have moved in, a little shoal circles it, and it still burns the cold green of the deep.

An old red star, swollen and shedding its skin, in an iron cage it has already started to break. Every so often it goes supernova, and then it does it all again.

The crowned helm of Hollowgate's last gate-warden, still standing his watch long after there was nothing left to guard. Its pointed visor creaks open on cold light, and sometimes the warden himself steps out for a while.

The queen of a summer night, hanging by her own antennae with her lantern lit. Wherever she goes, her whole court follows.

Three wheels of living fire turn round a heart of cracked obsidian, each on its own axis. Stand too close and your eyebrows will know.

The circus balloon that drifted away with the ringmaster still aboard. It came back years later, its burner still lit and its propeller still turning, steering by the stars.

A great wave curling inside a driftwood hoop, made of sea glass worn smooth by a hundred years of tides. A pearl of light rides in its barrel.

An orrery built by the Hourwright, but its planets are hours: a pocket watch, an hourglass and a bell, each circling a little brass sun at its own pace. Now and then the whole sky of it lines up.

A blood moon rising in an iron ring, and on the crag beneath it a lone wolf that has been howling at it for a hundred years. Every so often the moon answers.

A mainspring wound so tight it glows, spilling its hours down a cascade of wheels to a balance that never stops trembling.

A Ferris wheel from a fairground that closed at midnight and kept turning anyway. Its cars are lit, and every one of them is empty.

A long pendulum in a brass frame, swinging over a floor of marble that slowly turns beneath it. One by one it knocks the little pins down, and that is how you know the world has moved.

A star-reader's astrolabe of gold filigree over a plate of living night sky. When its pointers line up, the sky above you starts to fall.

A ghost of a moon, resting in a tarnished silver bowl. Pale veils drift up out of it and its little phantom moons wander round and round, waxing and waning as they go.

Three wild honeycombs hanging from a blossoming branch, every cell full of light. The bees never stop working, and they never sting the one who carries it.

Golden hours orbit the glass. Now and then, time itself ripples out from it.

An open iron cage with no candle in it. A will-o'-wisp drifts around inside, and two more circle the bars.

A lattice of never-melting ice around a turning snowflake. It freezes the air around it.

A crooked little tower on a floating rock, every window lit, a telescope turning on the balcony. Wards circle it, and some nights the wizard lets off fireworks.

A whole galaxy turning inside a crystal ball, with two little planets on its orbit. Every so often it starts the universe over.

The town gate of Hollowgate itself, torn out of the earth with its road, towers and portcullis - all that is left of the town. Its people still walk through it every night, a procession of little ghosts with their lanterns, round and round and in under the arch.

The oldest mushroom in the dark wood, wearing a veil of living light. Her children circle her on a ring of glowing thread, and when she breathes out, the whole forest blooms.

An old iron cage around a skull, and inside it a soul of cold blue fire. Now and then the soul slips out, circles you and comes home.

From the bottom of the deepest trench: a black pearl that glows from inside, floating in a basket of living glass. A shoal of lanternfish circles it forever and a string of tiny lights trails behind.

A copper heart that runs on gears instead of blood. It beats, it breathes steam through its valves, and a storm of loose cogs circles it like it is trying to get back in.

Three woven hoops turning on three different axes, hung in the curve of the moon. They spin dreams out of the dark and wind them into the light at the centre; the threads that hang below are still drying.

A golden orrery where the moon hunts the sun. When it catches it, stars fall.

The last scrap of the island, with its last little lamp still lit, hanging over the tear where the world simply stops. Its edge is crumbling into nothing, and the nothing is pulling the pieces in.

A floating island whose waterfall pours off the edge, loops underneath and climbs back up into its own spring. A rainbow lives over the pool and never fades.

The alchemist's masterpiece: a wheel of four retorts, black, white, yellow and red, pouring their streams into a floating sphere of liquid gold. What drips from it is gold, too.

The machine that keeps the lost hours. Gears turn both ways at once around a loop of light that never ends, and sometimes it runs time backwards.

A whole coral reef inside a single drop of sea, fish and all. Two seahorses ride the kelp outside, and when the tide turns, the water starts to spin.

The hour that was never counted, spinning through every colour. When it strikes, time stops.

The last ride of a fairground that burned one autumn night. Its horses came back without their bodies, and they still run rings round the light that waits for them in the middle.

A star of light held in six beating wings, ringed by two turning halos. When it rises, so does everything around it.

A pocket watch caught in the very second it burst apart. Every piece still hangs where it flew, still turning, still keeping time, and now and then it stops yours too.

A dragon drawn in stars, slipped off the night sky and coiled around a globe of nebula, swimming circles round it forever. Now and then it writes itself back across the sky above you.

A sailor's storm glass that forecast one storm too many and caught it: thunderheads, rain, a churning sea and a waterspout, all sealed in one tall teardrop of glass. The gale outside is still trying to get in.

Hollowgate's bell rang so hard on the last night that it shook its own tower apart. The pieces never fell - spire, pillars and arches still drift round the bell as it swings, and every so often it tolls again.

A tiny bell tower whose clock has thirteen marks. The bell inside rings an hour nobody else can hear, and now and then it rings for you.

A spellbook that broke its chains. It flies on its own covers like wings, its writing burning violet, loose pages and glyphs wheeling around it while a quill writes on the air.

A gargoyle broken off the Hollowgate town hall with its corbel and a slab of wall. On stormy nights it wakes: its stone wings beat, its eyes burn, it turns its head to look at you, and it calls the lightning down.

A whole circus caught in a snow globe one winter night: a glowing tent, two lamps, and a tightrope walker under her parasol who has been crossing the same wire since the snow began. Shake it and the blizzard gets out.

A witch's clock forever racing towards midnight. When it strikes twelve, the bats come out.

The single minute of a total eclipse, caught and kept: a black moon with the corona streaming off it in every direction and the diamond ring flashing at its edge. You can walk all the way round it and it is still totality.

It doesn't give light. It shows you where the dark ends, and now and then it swallows the light.