The man in the doorway was old. Not Anselma old — older. His hair was white and thin, and his coat was the kind of coat that had been mended so many times the mends had mends. He carried a lantern that wasn't lit, and he looked at the dark jars the way you look at a garden after a frost.
"Don't be afraid," he said. "I followed you through the door because the door let me. It doesn't let just anyone."
Wren grabbed my arm. Her fingers were cold.
"Who are you?" I asked. My voice came out steadier than I felt.
"Silas," he said. "Silas Fenwick. I kept this room before Anselma did."
That stopped me. "Before her? How long ago?"
"Forty years," he said. "Give or take. I was younger than you are now, Kit. The moon called me the same way it called you. And when my three nights were done, I handed the room to Anselma, and I went home, and I never came back through the door again. Until tonight."
"Why tonight?" Wren asked.
"Because the door opened for me," Silas said. "The room only opens its door to a keeper when the keeper is gone. And Anselma is gone."
I looked down at the coat in my hands. It was still cold. It was still empty. And in its pocket, the little jar labeled ANSELMA was warm against my fingers.
"Where did she go?" I asked.
Silas set his unlit lantern on the floor and sat down on a crate. "She gave you her night," he said. "That's what the moon told you, and the moon doesn't lie. Every keeper gets three nights. But the room takes a price. When the moon is weak, the keeper can give one of her own nights to the moon, to keep it burning a little longer. Anselma gave hers to you. She gave it so you'd have time."
"Time for what?" I said.
"To learn the faster way," Silas said. "Because you're right, Kit. One button at a time will never be enough. There are thousands of jars in this room. Thousands of wishes. And you have two nights."
"So tell us," Wren said. "What's the faster way?"
Silas smiled. "You don't carry the wishes home one by one. You open the door. All of them at once. Under the open sky, at midnight, when the moon is highest. You open every jar, and the wishes fly home like birds. All of them. In one night."
"Then why didn't Anselma do that?" I asked.
"Because someone has to hold the door open," Silas said. "That's the keeper's job. The door doesn't stay open by itself. While the wishes are flying home, someone has to stand here, in the room, and hold it. And whoever holds the door can't go out under the sky with the rest. Whoever holds the door stays in the dark."
"And that's what Anselma did?" Wren said quietly.
Silas nodded. "She held the door for your first night, Kit. When you made your wish and the whole town went dark — that was her, holding the door, giving the moon her light. And it cost her. It cost her the night she had left."
"Is she dead?" I asked. My voice cracked on the last word.
"No," Silas said. "Not dead. She's in the jar."
I looked at the little jar in my hand. ANSELMA. The ink was faded, but the letters were clear.
"She put herself in a jar?" Wren whispered.
"She put her wish in a jar," Silas said. "Every keeper does, on their first night. It's the rule of the room. Your wish goes in a jar, and the jar goes on the shelf, and as long as the jar is closed, the room stands, and the moon keeps burning. Anselma's wish was to keep the moon alive. And tonight, she opened her own jar. She let her wish out, so the moon would have light enough to speak to you."
"So if I open this jar —" I started.
"Then her wish comes back to her," Silas said. "And she comes back. But the room loses its keeper. And without a keeper, the door closes. And if the door closes while the wishes are still inside —" He stopped. He looked at the dark jars. "Then the wishes stay here. In the dark. Forever."
"So I have to choose," I said. "Anselma, or the wishes."
"That's the choice every keeper faces," Silas said. "I faced it too, forty years ago. I chose the wishes. And I've regretted it every day since."
Wren was very quiet. She was looking at the jars, and I knew what she was thinking. Thousands of wishes. A wish to go home. A wish to be noticed. A wish for a father to come back. And somewhere on these shelves, in the dark, was my jar. The jar labeled KIT, sitting empty on the shelf.
"Wait," I said. "My jar is empty. I saw it last night. Why?"
Silas looked at me for a long moment. "Because you've never wished for yourself," he said. "Not once. You've carried other people's wishes for years, Kit. You've kept them warm. But you've never made one of your own."
That was true. I'd wished for other people. I'd wished for the town. I'd wished for the moon. But for myself? Nothing. I couldn't even think of what I'd wish for, if I had the chance.
"The moon said I have to make one more wish," I said. "The truest one I have. Before the last night ends. That's the only way it comes back all the way."
"Then you'll know it by tomorrow night," Silas said. "You'll know."
Wren touched my shoulder. "Then we do the Returning tonight. All the jars, all at once, under the sky. And Silas holds the door."
"No," Silas said. "I gave my nights away forty years ago. I'm not a keeper anymore. The door won't take me."
"Then who holds it?" Wren asked.
Silas looked at me. And I understood, before he said it.
"Me," I said. "I hold the door. And you two carry the jars out."
"No," Wren said. "Kit, no. If you hold the door, you stay in the dark. You don't get to go out under the sky. You don't get to make your wish."
"If I don't hold it, the door closes," I said. "And the wishes stay here forever. And the moon goes out."
Wren opened her mouth to argue, and then she closed it. Because she knew I was right. We both knew.
Silas stood up. "Then we don't have time to stand here talking. It's nearly midnight. The moon is highest at midnight. That's when the wishes fly best."
We worked fast. We took jars off the shelves, armfuls at a time, and carried them out through the door and up onto the hill, where the grass was wet with dew and the sky was black and empty except for the thin, tired crescent of the moon. The jars were cold in my hands. All of them dark. All of them silent.
Back and forth. My arms ached. My legs burned. Wren was breathing hard beside me, her hair falling out of its braid. Silas carried jars too, slower than us, but steady, like a man who remembered the rhythm of it.
"How many are left?" I asked, on what felt like the hundredth trip.
"Almost," Silas said. "The shelves are nearly empty. Just the top row now. And one jar stays behind."
"Which one?" Wren asked.
Silas looked at me. "Anselma's," he said. "Her jar stays in the room. With the keeper."
I looked at the little jar in my pocket. Warm. Alive. Waiting.
We carried the last of the jars out and set them in rows on the grass, hundreds of them, maybe thousands, all dark, all waiting.
And then I went back inside, alone, and I stood in the doorway of the long room, and I put my hands on the doorframe.
"Kit!" Wren called from outside. "It's midnight! The moon is up!"
I could see the moon through the doorway. It was so thin now. A sliver. A fingernail clipping of light. It looked like it could go out any second.
"Open them!" I shouted. "Open them all!"
And outside, on the hill, Wren and Silas began to open the jars.
I heard the first one pop. A small sound, like a cork coming out of a bottle. And then another. And another. And then a hundred at once, a thousand at once, like rain on a roof, like popcorn in a pan.
And then the light came.
It rose off the hill in a wave, gold and silver and blue and green, thousands of lights, all at once, rising into the sky like a flock of birds startled out of a field. They circled once over the hill, bright and beautiful, and then they scattered, flying out over Graywater, over the rooftops, over the sleeping town, each one going home to the person who had wished it.
And the moon — the moon caught fire.
It blazed. It burned silver-white, round and full and bright, so bright it hurt to look at, and the whole hill lit up like daytime, and I could see Wren's face, laughing and crying at the same time.
It was working. It was really working.
But my hands were going numb on the doorframe. The door was heavy. It was pulling the warmth out of my hands, out of my arms, out of my chest, the way cold water pulls the heat out of you when you fall in.
"Kit!" Wren shouted. "Kit, come out! It's done! The jars are open! Come out!"
I tried to let go of the doorframe. I tried to step forward, out into the light.
I couldn't move.
My feet were stuck to the floor. My hands were stuck to the wood. The door was holding me now, the way I had been holding it. And the cold was climbing up my legs, up my arms, and my breath was coming out in little white clouds.
"Kit!" Wren screamed. "Kit, what's happening?"
Silas was running toward the door, shouting something, but I couldn't hear him over the sound in my ears, a sound like wind in a tunnel.
And then the moon's voice came again. Close. So close it felt like it was inside my head.
"Kit," it said. "You held the door. You gave the wishes back. You did what a keeper does."
"But I'm not a keeper," I whispered. "I'm just Kit."
"Every keeper says that," the moon said. "On their first night."
And then the light from the hill went out, all at once, like someone had blown out a thousand candles. And the moon dimmed. And the cold closed over me.
And then I heard something else. A small sound. A pop, like a cork coming out of a bottle.
It came from my pocket.
Anselma's jar had opened itself.
And in the darkness of the long room, something warm touched my hand. A hand. Old and thin and familiar, with ink on the fingers.
"Kit," a voice said. A voice I knew. A voice like bedtime stories and warm kitchens and jars on a shelf. "Kit. Let go of the door."
I tried to let go. I tried so hard.
But my hands wouldn't open.
And Anselma's voice said, very quietly, "Then I'll hold it with you."
And behind us, in the doorway, there was only dark. And in the dark, Wren was calling my name, over and over, and her voice was getting farther away.
And then her voice stopped.
And then Wren said, from somewhere far away, in a voice I almost didn't recognize, a voice that sounded confused and frightened and very young —
"Kit? Who's Kit?"
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