The Lantern of Little Harbor

The village of Little Harbor sat like a small bird on the edge of the sea, all low roofs and chimneys that breathed soft smoke into the dusk. Salt hung in the air in a steady, gentle ribbon. Wooden boats leaned on sand like sleeping animals. At the very tip of the headland a white tower watched the water with a single golden eye. That eye was called the Lantern Heart. It did not simply shine. It remembered. People said the lantern learned the shape of each boat and hummed a seamanship lullaby when the fog came in.

Toby liked clocks more than stories, though he loved both. He was nine and had pockets full of brass teeth, tiny springs, and buttons that he rescued from laundry and market stalls. He kept them in jars on a narrow shelf under the attic eaves. In daylight the jars looked like tiny planets. At night they rattled quietly when the wind moved the house. Toby lived with his grandmother, Nora, who kept the town's books and knew how to make bread into comfort and a cup of tea into a small ceremony. She smelled of cardamom and the sea. When she laughed, the bread crust crumbled in the same pattern every time.

On the day this story begins, the harbor sun was a warm coin. Toby sat on the attic floor with a bent magnifier and a lamp that sputtered as if it were whispering. He worked with patience like a frog waiting on a lily pad. His fingers moved with the kind of careful attention that made people use the word 'steady' about him. He was building something that clicked and breathed. The thing took shape in his hands: a little fox, its body a collage of copper plates and a face of polished tin. He had given it glass eyes that caught the light and a tail made from a spool of clock-spring that could wind and unfurl.

He called the fox Pip because Pip was the sort of name that hopped in the mouth and made you smile. When the last gear fell into place, Toby wound the tiny key he had found near the shoreline. Pip shivered and gave a small, obedient cough. A puff of blue steam escaped its chest and the glass eyes blinked like two sleepy marbles.

— Hello, Pip, — Toby said, and the fox clicked and turned its head toward the window. Outside, gulls zipped through the gold air. The sea kept its slow, patient breath. Down in the lane, people walked with their small errands, and the lighthouse's golden eye tilted toward the horizon as it always did. For all that was ordinary in Little Harbor, there was a quiet readiness in the air, like a hand waiting on a sleeve. Toby did not know then that the readiness would be needed very soon.