Zuri Keeps the Lantern Swinging

Squeak, went the hook. Squeak, squeak. The lantern on the barn door swung out and back, and its light slid along the yard like a cat looking for somewhere warm to lie down. Zuri stood on an upturned apple crate with the long hooking pole in both hands, her tongue between her teeth, and lifted the lantern onto its hook. Eleven nights now. Eleven nights since Mama had ridden out through the gate on the road to Ferny Bottom, where the new baby cousin was waiting to be met.

Bramble the old sheepdog sat behind her with his chin on her heel, warm as a baked potato. He was the gray of a rainy sky, and he smelled of hay and apples and, very faintly, of the sea, though nobody could say why. "There," said Zuri, when the hook caught and the lantern hung straight. "Eleven down. Twelve to go." Bramble's tail moved twice against the straw.

Hanging the lantern was a grown-up job. Ines's mother lit it in the kitchen every evening and handed it to Zuri with both hands, and Zuri carried it out across the yard with Bramble walking beside her the whole way. It was how things were done now. It had been Mama's job, every night of Zuri's whole life, and Zuri had never once thought about who would do it next.

But a lantern alone does not put a barn to bed. When the light was on the hook, Mama used to walk the long aisle with her hand out, brushing the hay bales as she passed, and say her goodnight in the same soft voice, in the same order, every single night. "Goodnight, hay," she said. "Goodnight, hens. Goodnight, all the warm things."

Zuri knew it by heart. She had learned it standing in the straw, holding Mama's thumb. On the first night after Mama left, she had said the whole thing out loud, start to finish, and the barn had gone as quiet as a held breath. On the second night it had gone a little less quiet. On the eleventh night it was not quiet at all.

The hens stood in a row along the beam and muttered. They muttered like a room full of aunts. One of them came down the ramp, stepped onto Zuri's shoe, and stood there with her eyes half closed, muttering. "I said goodnight," Zuri told her. The hen said something back. It did not sound like goodnight.

Behind her, out in the yard, Bramble had walked away to the gate and lain down with his nose on his paws. He did that every night now. Zuri had decided not to think about it.

She tried singing. Mama had a goodnight song with a tune like a gate swinging, and Zuri had the first line and the last line and a hum in the middle where the words had fallen out. "Hmm hmm hmm, the light is on the hook, hmm hmm hmm, goodnight." The hens listened with their heads tilted, which gave her hope. Then they went back to muttering, and one of them muttered directly into her ear, which felt personal.

She tried her queenly voice. "Hens," she said. "It is time." She had been practicing her queenly voice for a year, and it worked beautifully on the palace cats. The hens looked at her the way the palace cats never did, which is to say they were not impressed in the slightest, and then one of them sat down on her shoe and stayed there.

"You're doing it wrong," said Ines from the doorway. Ines had hay in her hair and a pail in each hand, and she was laughing in the way that made it impossible to be cross with her. "You can't tell a hen. You have to give her a reason."

"I gave them a lantern," said Zuri, "and a song, and my queenly voice. That's everything I've got." "Then they'll mutter all night," said Ines. She set the pails down and came and stood in the straw beside Zuri, and her voice went gentle. "Hens don't settle for a voice. They settle for a dog. Every hen in this barn sleeps when Bramble lies down in his corner and sighs. That's how it's always been, and you know it."

"Then why isn't he lying down?" said Zuri. Ines looked out at the gate for a moment. "Because he's got his nose pointing down the road," she said. "He's been out there every night since your mama left. He doesn't know how to stop waiting."

Zuri stood very still. In the lantern light, Bramble was a dark shape at the gate with his nose on his paws and his eyes open, pointed down the road exactly where the road went away toward Ferny Bottom. Eleven nights, out on the cold flagstones, waiting for the sound of hooves.

Her throat went tight. She had been so busy missing Mama that it had not once occurred to her that somebody else in this yard might be missing her too, and might be doing it in a harder place, on colder stones, with nobody to tell.

"I thought it was only me," she said quietly. Ines put a warm hand on Zuri's shoulder and gave it a squeeze. "It's never only you," she said. "That's the good news and the bad news, all at once." Zuri laughed, a little. Then she said, "I need the heel of a loaf."

She found it in the kitchen, where the cook was half asleep on a stool, and she carried it out across the yard in both hands, the way she carried the lantern. Then she sat down on the cold flagstones beside Bramble, which is not a princess kind of thing to do, and put the bread on the ground in front of his nose.

"Mama always gave you the heel," she said. "I know. I know a lot of things about you. I know you like the third flagstone, where the sun sits all afternoon, and I know you're afraid of the goose, and I know you're not afraid of anything else." Bramble looked at the bread. He looked at Zuri. He did not eat it.

So she told him things. She told him about Ferny Bottom, where the houses climbed the hill like plates stacked in a cupboard. She told him about the new cousin, who was small and loud and, according to the letter, had Zuri's own yawn. She told him Mama would be home before the last of the apples were picked. And then, because the yard was dark and Bramble was warm and nobody else was listening, she told him the thing she had been keeping in her pocket for eleven nights.

"What if she comes back," Zuri whispered, "and the farm had a fine time without her? What if the lantern got hung and the hens got settled and the apples got picked and nobody needed her at all?" Her voice came out smaller than she meant it to. "I miss her so much it feels like a hole in my pocket. But I don't want to be the only reason she comes home."

Bramble ate the bread. Then he did the biggest thing a dog can do, which is to get up when he would much rather stay down. He walked across the yard, into the barn, turned around three times in his corner, and lay down with a sigh that moved the straw.

And the hens went quiet. One by one, like a kettle going quiet at the end of the evening. The brown one first, then the speckled one, then all of them together, small soft sounds folding down into feathers. The barn smelled of warm hay and apples and dog, and for the first time in eleven nights it smelled like bedtime.

Zuri sat on a hay bale for a while, swinging her heels. Then she said the goodnight properly, all the way through. "Goodnight, hay. Goodnight, hens. Goodnight, all the warm things." Bramble's tail went thump, once, in his corner. The lantern swung, and its light came in through the door and lay down in the straw beside her like something tired.

In the morning the baker's cart came up the hill with a letter, and Ines ran it out to the barn before Zuri had her boots on. Mama wrote small and neatly, and the paper smelled of ink and oranges, which is to say it smelled of Mama.

"Here is a thing I do every single night," Mama wrote. "On the window hook here at Ferny Bottom, I hang a little lantern. I light it and I sit and look at it, and I think: my Zuri is hanging the one at the barn door at this exact minute, and we are standing in the same small light. It makes the day feel like it has a hook on it, the way our barn does."

"I miss you like a hole in my pocket," she wrote. "The baby cousin has your yawn. She has your frown too, but only when she is thinking. Twelve more nights, my love. Keep the lantern swinging."

Zuri read it twice, then once more. Then she laughed out loud in the empty barn, because all this time she had thought she was the one holding up the nights, and there was Mama at the other end of the road doing exactly the same thing, at the same minute, every night, and neither of them had known.

That evening Ines's mother lit the lantern and handed it to Zuri with both hands. But first Zuri stopped at the gate with the heel of the loaf, and Bramble ate it standing up, and the two of them looked down the road together in the dark. "Twelve more nights," she told him. "Mama's lantern is smaller than ours, but hers is just as bright." Bramble's tail went thump, thump against the gatepost.

The barn settled early that night. The hens tucked their heads under their wings. Bramble lay down in his corner with his paws crossed like a gentleman. Zuri pulled her shawl up around her ears and sat on the bale nearest the door, watching the lantern swing, out and back, out and back, until the swinging got smaller and slower and the light got soft.

She said the goodnight to the barn, and then she said one more, quietly, in her own voice and not Mama's. Then she walked up the hill to the castle with Bramble pacing beside her, and at the top she turned around and looked back. The lantern was still swinging at the barn door, small and gold, like a star that had come down to keep an eye on things.

From her window she could see it through the apple trees. Out and back. Out and back. Somewhere past the last hill, a smaller lantern hung on a window hook in Ferny Bottom and swung the same slow way, keeping the night company.

The hens were asleep. The hay was warm. Down at the barn, Bramble sighed once in his corner and then went quiet, and Zuri put her cheek on her pillow and let the dark come close and soft around her. Twelve nights would go by like a lantern swinging, out and back, out and back, and home. Goodnight, hay. Goodnight, hens. Goodnight, all the warm things.