A Lantern for the Drowned Saint

Every year on the night of the drowning festival, the pilgrims floated paper lanterns down the Ember canal for the saint who lived beneath the water, and every year Tamil sold them the lanterns.

He was eleven. He had no mother and no boat and a talent for folding paper so it held a flame without catching. That was enough to live on, at the Ember Market. Most things were.

This year, when the last pilgrim had gone, a lantern floated back up the canal against the current and stopped at his feet.

It was not one of his. It was old — older than the market — made of oiled silk the color of a bruise healing. Inside it, instead of a candle, was a voice.

"Lantern-boy," it said. "Will you carry a light for me?"

Tamil had been raised on stories. He knew you did not say yes to a voice in a lantern. He also knew you did not say no to a saint.

"Where?" he said.

"Up," said the saint. "To the top of the clock tower. I have been under the water for four hundred years and I would like to see the city once, the way it looks from above, the way it looked the night I fell."

So Tamil climbed. Past the sleeping bell-keeper, past the pigeons, up the iron ladder to the very top where the wind came in off the hills. He held the lantern out over the city — the canals like silver thread, the market glowing like coals.

The saint was quiet for a long time.

"It got bigger," she said at last.

"Is that bad?"

"No," said the saint, and Tamil could hear that she was smiling. "No. It's what I wished for."