Morwenna Haven walks the forest each night with a lit candle, calling the night-name only her youngest daughter knew. Little Firefly. The candle she left burning in their old house that is now no longer there started a fire and killed three of her family. She was not home. Now she searches for their spirits among the glowing purple trees. She whispers the name again. Little Firefly. The trees lean toward her as she passes, and cold slides through her chest. She tells herself it is her children's hands. Tonight the cold finds her fast. A voice answers from the dark. "Mama-who-glows." Morwenna stops. Only her daughter said those words. Her candle shakes in her hand. The voice comes from off the pale stone path, deeper in the trees. It looked like a little ghost girl peeking out for a brief second before it darted and said, "Mama-who-glows. Come find me." She steps off the stones. Her feet sink into soft moss, green and purple in the candlelight. The voice moves as she moves. Each time she nears it, it slips farther back. She calls the private night-name. The voice only giggles and drifts away. "Closer, Mama. You look like a firefly." Her daughter used to say that. Memories flood her mind. Morwenna's throat tightens. She pushes past leaning trunks. Pale shapes peer out from behind the trees, watching her with hollow eyes. She barely sees them. She sees only the dark ahead, where the voice waits. Then she looks back. The glowing stones of the path are gone. Only black trees stand behind her. The voice laughs again, thin and wrong. It is not her daughter's laugh. It never quite was. "Come find me," it sings. "Come, come." Morwenna lifts her candle high. The wax has tipped in her grip, and spectral flame spills sideways, still burning. She once tried to snuff this flame. It would not die. She stares at it now. Her daughter called her a firefly. A firefly glows in one place so others can find it. Her daughter would not ask her to chase deeper into the dark. Her daughter would follow the light. "You are not her," Morwenna says. The voice calls sweeter. "Mama, please." Morwenna kneels. She sets the tipped candle on the moss. The flame steadies and burns bright against the trees. She does not move toward the voice. She stays with the light, as a firefly would. "I am here," she says. "If you are mine, come to me." The voice snarls. The sweetness cracks. The cold rushes past her, angry now, and the pale watchers behind the trees shrink back. The mimicking spirit shrieks once and flees into the dark. Its false calls fade to nothing. Morwenna waits by her candle. The night grows still. A new glow rises above the treetops. Pale light drifts through the branches, green and soft. Morning has come. She snuffs out her flame and turns back to where she was at a makeshift cabin next to the purple ghostly lake where ghost vale’s spirit filled forests begin.

The next night Morwenna walked deeper than before. Her candle burned steady in her hand. The false daughter had tricked her once. She would not follow a voice again. Tonight she looked for the real ones with her eyes, not her ears. She told herself her children would wait quietly. They would not call and run. The trees changed as she went. Purple leaves hung thick overhead, veined with teal. Pale shapes drifted through the branches, half-seen, never still. She did not chase them. She passed under a great gnarled trunk wrapped in faint wisps. Small ghost faces floated in its crown, watching her. They did not speak her daughter's name. That was how she knew they were only trees full of strangers. A crow dropped onto a low branch ahead. Its body glowed faint blue, see-through, with trailing feathers like smoke. It fixed one bright eye on her candle. Then it hopped farther down the path and looked back. It wanted her to follow. Morwenna hesitated. A voice she could not trust. But this was no voice. It made no promises and spoke no name. She followed the crow through the glowing grove. Spirit figures peeked from trunk after trunk. The crow led her to a clearing. A grey stone fountain stood at its center, cracked and old. Luminous mushrooms grew along its tiers. Water drifted up instead of down, soft and slow. Ghosts rose with the mist and sank again. Morwenna stepped closer. Around the fountain's base a ring of spirits held hands. Their forms linked hand to hand, glowing pale, turning in a slow circle. She counted them. Not three. Many. None wore her daughter's shape. None turned to her. They did not know her at all. She stood at the edge and waited. The cold passed through her chest, the way it always did. She had told herself that cold was her children. Now she watched these strangers circle and felt the same cold. It was only the forest. It touched everyone the same. Her children were not here. Morwenna's hand shook. She had walked this forest every night. She had believed the trees leaned for her, that the cold held her. Tonight she saw plainly. The spirits here were not her family. They were lost people who did not know her name. The crow watched from the fountain's rim. Morwenna knelt by the water. She looked into it and saw her own veiled face lit by the flame. "You are not mine," she said to the circling dead. "But you are someone's." She understood now. Her family was not simply waiting among the first trees. If she wanted them, she had to learn this place. She had to find who these spirits were, and who might lead her further. She rose. The crow lifted off and flew ahead, and Morwenna followed it into the deeper wood.

The crow led Morwenna deeper into the purple wood. Wisps curled around the pale trunks. Faint figures peeked from behind the bark, then slid away. She kept the crow in sight and her candle high. For once she did not plant the flame to mark her way. She trusted the bird instead. The path thinned, then vanished under moss. Still she followed. The crow stopped on a low branch. It looked back at her once. Then its blue glow thinned to nothing and it was gone. Morwenna stood alone among strange trees. She turned in a slow circle. No path lay behind her. No path lay ahead. She had no beacon planted, no flame left burning to call her home. She was lost. Then the trees ahead began to glow. Not pale, like the wisps. Orange. Red. A heat she had not felt in years. Morwenna walked toward it because there was nowhere else to go. She stepped into a clearing and stopped. A house stood there, made of drifting smoke and dim timber. Its edges faded as if half-forgotten. But the windows burned. Ghostly flame wrapped the walls, blue and green and curling. She knew the shape of the door. She knew the slope of the roof. It was her house. The house that burned. Her breath caught. She walked closer. Through a window she saw the mantel, and on the floor below it, a candle lying on its side. Pale flame spilled from it across the boards. The same candle. The one she had left burning the night she went out. The one that would not go out now, no matter how she tried. Morwenna sank to her knees at the threshold. In the smoke of the front room sat a small stuffed bear. Glowing flames licked through its stitched body. Her daughter's bear. Her daughter had carried it everywhere. She had carried it that night. "I did this," Morwenna said. Her voice shook. "I left the candle. I was not here." The fire did not answer. It only burned the way it had burned before, slow and bright, eating the walls that were not fully there. She had told herself for so long that she walked the forest to find her children. Now she saw the truth the fire showed her. She walked to escape this. The tipped candle. The empty house. Her own hand that left the flame. Morwenna looked down at the candle she carried. The same shape. The same stubborn flame. She had been holding her own guilt in her fist every single night. The burning house faded slowly, until only smoke remained, and then nothing. The clearing stood empty and dark. Morwenna knelt in the cold with her candle, far from any path she knew. She was lost in the deep wood. But she no longer wondered why the dead would not come to her. She knew now what she was.