The Lantern Stall

Mara had run the lantern stall for eleven years and had never once sold a lantern to someone who needed one.

People bought them for weddings, for the harvest walk, for the night the river went dark and everyone pretended it was a festival. They bought them to hang in windows that already had electric light. They bought them, she suspected, because the paper was thin enough to see her hands through when she folded it, and there was something in that they wanted to take home.

Placeholder text. This chapter exists so the text reader can be tested with real paragraphs, headings, emphasis and a scene break. It is original filler written for the build and will be replaced by a creator's work.

The market opened at dusk. Stalls came up along the canal like teeth, and the smell of frying dough reached her before the first customer did. She lit one lantern, then the row, then the tall one at the corner that she never sold and never explained.

"You could charge more," said the boy from the noodle cart, as he did most nights.

"I could," she agreed, as she did most nights.

The woman who came at the end of the evening did not look at the lanterns. She looked at the tall one at the corner, the unsold one, for long enough that Mara stopped folding.

"That one isn't for sale," Mara said.

"I know," the woman said. "I made it."

Mara had bought the stall from a man who had bought it from a man. Nobody had ever mentioned a woman. Nobody had ever mentioned who made the tall lantern, or why its paper never yellowed, or why, on the nights the river went dark, it was the only light on the canal that did not flicker.

"Then you'll want it back," Mara said, and was surprised to find her hands had already begun to untie it.

"No," the woman said. "I want to show you how to make another."