Mira and the Thanksgiving Lantern Walk

Thanksgiving night came to Whisperwood cold and clear, and it smelled of wet leaves.

It was the night of the Thank-You Lantern Walk.

Everyone made a little lantern, said who it was for, and hung it on the Hollow Oak.

Mira the moon moth had made hers from half a walnut shell.

It was for the moon, who had never once asked anybody for anything.

Whimsy the willow sprite had woven hers from willow strips.

It leaned to one side.

“It’s supposed to do that,” said Whimsy, before anybody asked.

Puffin had made his from a mushroom cap. It was already a bit nibbled.

“Mine is for snacks,” he said. “Even the ones I hid and can’t find.”

Tillo the lantern turtle tipped a tiny flame from his big lantern into each small one.

“Thank you,” he said, every time. That was Tillo’s whole speech.

Then Mira noticed someone at the very edge of the light.

It was Suri, the sand-fox from the Sunlit Dunes, at her first Thanksgiving in Whisperwood.

Her birch-bark lantern was empty.

Her big ears were folded down flat.

Mira knew that look. She had worn it herself once.

She fluttered over.

Whimsy zipped after her. “Oh! She’s cold. Or she doesn’t like lanterns. Or…”

Then she stopped.

“Wait. We ask. We don’t guess.”

“Are you all right?” asked Mira.

Suri touched her forehead to Mira’s. That was hello, in the Dunes.

“I don’t know who mine is for,” she said. “At home we don’t do lanterns.”

“What do you do?”

Suri’s ears came up.

Just a little.

“On the first cold night after the fig harvest, we climb the biggest dune and wait for the stars. Then we pass the figs around, and after every bite you hum a thank-you to the wind. The wind goes everywhere, so it can carry it to whoever it’s for.”

She looked at her empty lantern.

“My grandmother is very far away.”

Mira shuffled closer, until her wing touched Suri’s fur.

Then Puffin said, “KA…”

“Puffin, no,” said Whimsy.

“…CHOO!”

Star-sparks shot out of his nose and blew Whimsy’s lantern straight out.

Pfft.

“My leaning lantern!”

“Excuse me,” said Puffin. “Cold-night sneeze. They’re stronger.”

Tillo relit it and turned to Suri.

“No dunes here,” he said. “But we have a hill.”

“There aren’t any hills,” said Whimsy.

Tillo blinked his slow turtle blink.

“There is one.”

He settled onto the moss. His big round shell looked like… well. A small, mossy hill.

Suri laughed, for the first time all evening.

So they climbed up. Puffin took three tries.

From the top of Tillo, they could see the first stars.

Suri opened her pouch: sun-dried figs, carried all the way from the Dunes.

There were five.

She had been saving them.

She gave one to each friend and kept the last.

Puffin looked at his fig. Then at his hat. Then at the fig.

“I’m going to eat it,” he said bravely. “Probably.”

One bite, then hum.

Mira hummed for Suri, for coming such a long way.

Whimsy hummed for the willows, a little too loud.

Tillo hummed one note so low the moss tickled.

Puffin took the tiniest bite in Whisperwood history and hummed for snacks. Then his friends. Then snacks again, to be safe.

Suri went last. She hummed for her grandmother, a long wobbly note that went up at the end.

A breeze took the hum away through the trees.

Puffin’s nose twitched.

“Oh no,” said Whimsy.

“KA-CHOO!”

This time the sparks went sideways, right into Suri’s empty lantern.

It flickered.

Then it glowed, warm and sandy gold.

“I meant to do that,” said Puffin, who had not.

Suri held it up. “Then this one is for the wind,” she said. “For carrying things.”

Tillo nodded. “Good choice.”

They hung their lanterns on the Hollow Oak’s lowest branch.

Whimsy fell asleep in the middle of a sentence about willows.

Puffin curled up under the oak, the rest of his fig tucked in his hat.

Mira folded her wings on Tillo’s shell, which was still warm.

The lanterns dimmed. The leaning one. The nibbled one. The walnut one.

Only Suri was still awake.

Of course she was. Sand-foxes sleep in the daytime.

She sat among her friends, all snoring in different sizes, and watched the last gold lantern.

She hummed one more thank-you, very small.

It was hard to say who that one was for. Possibly everybody. Possibly Puffin’s fig.

The wind took it anyway.