The Last Light on the Coast

Wren had always believed the lighthouse was alive. On windy nights it hummed, a low and wonderful sound, like someone singing with their mouth closed.

Her grandmother, who had kept the light for forty-one years, only laughed when Wren said so. "Everything is alive if you listen carefully enough," she said, and went back to polishing the great glass lens.

The lighthouse stood at the very edge of Gullhaven, where the cliffs dropped straight into the sea. Below, the waves argued with the rocks all day and all night. Above, the stars came out one by one, as if someone were lighting candles across the sky.

Every evening at exactly seven o'clock, Wren climbed the one hundred and twelve steps to the lamp room. She counted them out loud. She had never once missed a step.

But on the night this story begins, she reached the top, opened the little iron door, and found the lamp room completely, impossibly dark.