Nora and the Lullaby Line

Every night when the town's windows blinked out like sleepy fireflies, Nora pulled her coat tight and walked to the small iron station at the edge of Willow-by-the-Low-Light. Her coat was patched with scraps of starcloth and the elbow that always frayed had a tiny silver button shaped like a crescent moon. Children left little notes in her pockets — a drawing of a dragon, a ribbon, a pebble warm from someone's pocket — and she kept them the way one keeps the best buttons: in a small tin labeled "For Safe-Keeping." Nora's hands smelled of steam and flour from the bakery beneath the station; the night always tasted faintly of warm bread and peppermint when she began her rounds.

The train Nora tended was not for trains of steam and smoke. It ran on hush and on the slow exhale of the moon. Its rails were thin threads of moonlight stitched between rooftops, and if you leaned close, you could hear the little cars breathing lullabies. The Lullaby Line had three cars: the Whisper Car where small, giggling dreams lived, the Wide-Sky Car where brave adventure dreams liked to stretch their legs, and the Moon-Basket at the front where Nora kept the town's sleeping wishes wrapped in soft paper. On the engine sat a living, fluttering thing called the Moonflower. It looked like a lamp with petals and hummed with a gentle light. When it was healthy, the hum was warm and round and made children dream of swimming with whales and climbing very tall trees.

Nora's favorite time was the first stop, when she unlocked the wooden crates and slid out the jars and tins that held dreams. Each dream was a small thing: sometimes a feather of laughter, sometimes a strip of color. She learned to tell the kind of dream by the way it smelled. Courage smelled like metal and lemonade; kindness smelled like wool and warm milk. She would tilt the jars, listen for a tiny exhale, and then place the dream on the right shelf. The townspeople called her a conductor, though she never blew a horn. Her voice was the soft bell that kept the trains on schedule.

That Friday night, a wind with more teeth than usual had been scraping along the rooftops. Nora felt it in her bones as she unlocked the Moon-Basket. The Moonflower's glow had been softer all week, like a candle in a room where someone mutters. She tapped the side of the engine, the way she tapped an old kettle to wake it up. It answered with a small, tired note, and a small silver dust fell into Nora's palm — the kind of dust that tastes like the very last crumb of a cookie. Somewhere beneath that sound a child's laugh had been swallowed.

Down on Maple Lane a boy named Luca rubbed his eyes under the moon. Luca always kept one foot out of his blanket, even in winter, because his dreams liked to come in from the window and sit on that foot like a cat. That night Luca sat up and looked at his empty bed and felt the missing pocket where his dream should have been. It felt like a silence with a shape. He climbed out quietly and walked to the station, footsteps soft as if he were trying not to disturb the hush. When Nora found him, he was small as a matchbox and looked even smaller because his smile had been folded up and put away.

"My dream's gone," Luca said. He touched his chest where dreams usually ticked like tiny watches. "I think it was stolen."

Nora set her hands on his shoulders. She smelled his hair—soap and the warm edge of a book—and felt the quick beat of his heart. "Sometimes dreams go wandering, or they get lost under a sofa. Sometimes they go visiting a friend's house and come back late. We'll find yours, Luca. The Lullaby Line knows how to look."

She meant the words, but she had a hollow in her stomach she had not known how to name. In the Moon-Basket, where the glow should have been soft and steady, the Moonflower hiccupped a sound like a tiny bell that had forgotten its tune. Nora closed her eyes and felt the threads of moonlight tighten as if something was pulling on them from far away.