Glimmer Sparkwright kept one hand over their eye and ran. The eye was the problem. It sparkled, even now, leaking light between their fingers. For three hundred years Glimmer had searched Ebonywood for another creature with an eye like this one, and found none. Tonight that same light would get them killed. The wolves hunted by it. Glimmer heard them behind the dead trees, paws on wet leaves, breath wheezing through ribs that showed through gray fur. These wolves had holes where eyes should be. They could not see shapes. They saw glow. And Glimmer's eye glowed like a lantern in a cellar. Glimmer pressed harder. Light still bled through. One wolf broke from the trees and lunged. Glimmer dove sideways. The jaws snapped shut on air. Drool struck Glimmer's neck, cold as pond water. Ahead stood an old funeral carriage, black and splintered, its wheels sunk in mud. Two glass lanterns hung from its sides. Both held stubs of candle. Glimmer understood at once. The wolves chased light. So Glimmer would give them a brighter one. Glimmer threw open the carriage door. Inside sat a porcelain doll on a cracked seat, its painted eyes staring, its dress faded red and blue. Glimmer shoved it aside and found what they needed on the floor: a tin of old match heads, spilled and dry. Two wolves circled the carriage now. A third limped close behind. Glimmer struck a match against the rusted fitting. It flared. They lit both lanterns, and the glass threw yellow light across the mud. Then Glimmer uncovered their eye. The sparkle shone. The wolves swung their hollow heads toward it. Glimmer waited one breath, two, until the gaunt leader gathered to spring. Then Glimmer clapped both hands over the eye and dropped flat behind the carriage wheel. Darkness swallowed Glimmer. Only the lanterns burned now. The wolves saw two bright points and charged them. Teeth hit glass. The lanterns shattered. Flame caught the dry splintered wood, and the carriage went up fast. The wolves yelped and scattered from the heat, chasing the only light left, which was fire they could not bite. Glimmer crawled away through the mud, eye still covered, and did not stop until the howls faded. The carriage burned behind them, a tower of sparks in the black woods. The wolves were gone. Glimmer had lived. But the fire climbed higher than any lantern. It lit the whole clearing. And from the trees across the flames, something watched. Not a wolf. It stood upright, tall and pale, a long dark cape hanging still in the heat. Red eyes caught the firelight and held on Glimmer's uncovered face. The pale figure smiled, and two sharp teeth showed. It had seen the eye. It began to walk toward Glimmer, slow and certain, as if it had been waiting three hundred years for exactly this light.