The Second Night

He decided to go out at midnight. This was not a decision he made carelessly. He made it systematically, considering the risks and working out how to manage them: he told his dad what he was doing, he wore two layers and waterproof trousers, he took his main torch and a backup torch and a whistle, and he stayed on the near shore path, which was wide and well away from the dangerous bank.

His dad, to his eternal credit, simply said: "Wake me up when you get back."

The night was clear. Properly clear, with stars visible in numbers that Felix never saw at home in the city, spread across the sky in thick clusters, their light cold and very far away. The lake reflected them dimly, a dark mirror scattered with light. His breath misted in the air before him. The frost was already forming on the grass.

He stood at the treeline and waited.

He didn't have to wait long.

At ten minutes past midnight, the light appeared on the far shore. The same warm yellow glow, the same patient, unhurried movement along the path he'd walked that afternoon. It paused at the same points. He watched it trace the route he now knew: past the undercut banks, past the places where the ground gave way, keeping always to the safe inland edge.

Then it crossed the bridge.

Felix's heart accelerated. The light was coming around the lake, onto his side, getting closer. He stood very still.

The light moved along the near path, unhurriedly, and when it reached the birch trees it paused. Felix could see the figure now, much more clearly than in the morning mist. A boy, roughly his own height, dressed in clothing that looked old, rough trousers and a heavy coat and boots that came up to his mid-calf. He was holding the lantern at his side, and the light fell across his face in the way of candlelight, warm and slightly shifting.

His face was not frightening. He looked, Felix thought, like a boy who was very tired. Not tired the way you were tired after a long day, but tired in a deeper way, the way someone looked when they'd been doing something for too long without being able to stop.

He was looking at Felix.

"Hello," Felix said, keeping his voice low and steady. "My name's Felix."

The boy's expression didn't change. He didn't speak. But he didn't disappear, either.

"I know what you're doing," Felix said. "I walked the path today. I saw the markers on the far bank. And I read about you, in the history books." He paused. "I think you've been doing this for a very long time."

The boy tilted his head slowly. It was the same gesture from the morning, and now that Felix could see his face more clearly it looked less eerie and more like the habit of someone who was listening carefully.

"I don't know if you can hear me," Felix continued. "I don't know how this works. But I wanted you to know that someone knows. That I know. What happened to you, and what you've been doing since." He swallowed. "I think that matters. I think someone should have said it a long time ago."

The boy stood perfectly still for a long moment.

Then, very slowly, he raised the lantern. Not toward Felix, not in any threatening way. He raised it upward, like someone lifting a light to see better, or like someone acknowledging something. A gesture that, Felix thought, might have been a nod, translated into light.

The lantern's glow brightened briefly. Not a flicker. A steady, deliberate brightening, warm and full, for just a few seconds.

Then the boy turned and walked back the way he'd come, unhurried as ever, back along the near path, back across the bridge, back along the far shore. And this time, when the light disappeared, it didn't vanish abruptly. It faded, slowly, like a candle being carried into another room.

Felix stood in the dark for a long time after it was gone.