Juniper and the Moon's Missing Lullaby

Juniper woke to the quiet thump of a page turning somewhere above her bed. The sound was gentle, like a moth landing on a window, and for a moment she held her breath and listened. The room smelled of chamomile and ink, the two scents folded together like a secret. She padded across the wooden floor in her bare feet, the boards warm from the afternoon sun that had not long ago gone to sleep. In the window the moon hung like a pale coin. Juniper pressed her palm to the cold glass and watched a tiny parade of moths circle its face, carrying slivers of old light.

Her home was the Night Archive, a library that sat on the topmost roof of the town, stitched into the eaves of the old clocktower. Shelves leaned against one another like old friends, and every book had a small note tied to its spine with thread that shivered when the wind passed. Juniper knew the notes by the way they smelled—some like lemon peel, some like coal, some like rain. She could tell by a single breath whether a lullaby had been sung a hundred times or a thousand.

At nine, Juniper's hands were quick and careful. She could thread a needle without looking, and she could smooth out a crease in a lullaby until the paper sighed. She lived with Mr. Wren, the keeper of the Archive, who moved through the stacks like someone tending a garden of sleep. He had thin hair that smelled of thyme and a waistcoat with stitched pockets full of small things: a brass thimble, a button that had seen three good winters, a pebble that hummed when it rained. He called Juniper his 'little curator' and left little drawings of foxes in her workbooks.

That night, Mr. Wren sat at a window table with a cup of tea the color of dawn. His face was a map of lines that always made Juniper think of flight paths. He hummed a tune that seemed to fit the tilt of the moon itself. Juniper slid a stool beside him, the stool that had worn smoother where her knees had rested while she learned to read song-maps.

'Listen,' Mr. Wren said, and he tapped the table once. The sound that rose was not a song, exactly. It was the kind of small thing that made the hair at the back of your neck stand up. A lullaby should have been there; instead there was a thin, empty space where a melody rested the night before. Juniper felt the air in her chest pull tight. She had laid out the lullabies earlier, had checked their stitches and their breaths. One shelf, the very shelf that held the Moon's lullabies, was lighter than it ought to be.

'Someone took a tune,' she whispered, though her voice felt ridiculous in the humming room.

Mr. Wren's cup trembled. 'A missing lullaby isn't like a missing sock. Tunes don't wander off. They are found or they are kept or they are forgotten. And sometimes—' He paused, watching the moon. '—sometimes they are held by things that were not meant to hold them.'

Juniper's fingers found the hem of her nightshirt and twisted it. Outside, the town breathed in sleep. Inside, the paper on the shelf breathed out nothing at all. The moon, which usually hummed soft backings to the Archive, was thin and hushed. Juniper had never felt the moon so quiet. She thought of the lullaby she had been learning, the one that Mr. Wren taught when the storms came, and she felt its absence like a missing tooth. She wanted, fiercely, to set that missing piece right.

Mr. Wren rose slowly and put a hand on Juniper's shoulder. His fingers were warm despite the night.

'You have the careful hands,' he said. 'You read the notes. You hear the spaces between the lines. Will you come with me to check the roof?' He did not ask as if there was a choice.

On the roof the air tasted of salt and orange peel, and the stars hung low enough that Juniper felt she might catch them with a jar. The Archive's roof was a patchwork of shingles and skylights, and the skylight closest to the moon had a circle of frost along its edge like a tiny crown. Mr. Wren pointed to the silvery smear on the lead that ran along the tiles.

'Someone walked out here tonight,' he said. 'Someone who does not make dust like other people. Do you know of anyone who walks without leaving a trail?'

Juniper thought of the alley cats that hung on the gateposts and of the watchman with his soft boots. She thought of nights when the wind came in like a whisper and rearranged the chimneys. 'No,' she said, though her chest beat a quick, small drum.

They climbed the stairs to the small attic room that held the Archive's most delicate things. There, on a shelf beneath the moon's glow, sat an empty space shaped like a crumpled hand. A note had been left behind: a scrap of paper folded like a bird with no wings. Someone had written a single word across it in charcoal: 'Lonely.'

Juniper's throat tightened. Books could be lonely if no one read them, she knew. Lullabies could be lonely if no child remembered how they sounded. The word stuck to the air and did not want to fall.

Mr. Wren's eyes were wet but steady. 'Every lullaby that has ever been sung here has a place. If one goes missing, somewhere else will feel it. The moon is quieter. The town will sleep with a small hollow in its ear. If we do nothing, the hollow will grow.'

Juniper cradled the scrap in her hand. The paper was warm as if it had just been sleeping. She looked up at the moon and felt a small, furious courage swell in her ribs.

'I will find it,' she said, and though her voice was small it did not quiver. Mr. Wren opened his mouth as if to disagree, then closed it and reached into his waistcoat. He drew out a slender object wrapped in cloth: a lantern no bigger than a child's cupped hands. The glass inside looked like water and moonlight braided together.

'This is Lumen,' he said. 'It finds the sound in silence. It will not force a song from a heart. It will show the spaces where songs hide. Take it when the moon is a sliver and the town breathes deep. Take care, Juniper. The nights are kind, but not all things that are lonely are gentle.'

Juniper held Lumen. It was not heavy. She could feel the whole roof under her feet and the whole town under the roof. She felt the missing lullaby like a pebble in her pocket that had once been a stone and wanted to grow into a small mountain.