Wren Dalloway had planned Tanglewood's harvest fair for ten straight years, and this year she had nothing. The centennial deserved a headline attraction, something no one had seen. Instead her clipboard held the same tired list: pie booths, hay rides, the fiddle stage. She stood in the empty fairgrounds at dusk, ribbons on her apron fluttering, and felt the whole town's hundredth birthday shrinking to just another Saturday. She crumpled the list and started walking. Her boots crossed a carpet of wildflowers, blooms glowing pink and gold in the last light. Then she stopped. Above the meadow, on its rise, stood the old stone observatory. Its green dome caught the fading sun. Wren had passed it a thousand times. She had never once thought of it at night. A fair happened in daylight. But a birthday could happen under stars. She climbed the hill in the dark, breathless, and pushed through the tall doors. The telescope room opened above her, the great lens angled at the sky. She pictured the whole town crowded here after sunset. Lanterns. Music drifting up. And a finale of fireworks bursting over the dome, sparks raining down like falling stars. No daytime fair could offer that. This was her headline. But she needed something living, something that would make people gasp before the fireworks ever lit. She thought of the beekeeper. Melissa Honeyward answered her cottage door in a mustard bee suit, veil pushed back, a jar of honey still in one gloved hand. She did not seem surprised to find Wren panting on her step at night. "You want my bees," Melissa said. Not a question. "I want a spectacle," Wren said. "The centennial. The observatory, at night. And I heard your swarm does more than make honey." Melissa set down the jar. She lifted two fingers and whistled, low and short. From the dark hives behind her cottage, a hum rose. A ribbon of bees poured out and hung in the air, then twisted itself into a slow, spinning spiral, glinting under her porch lantern. Wren's breath caught. "They follow you." "They follow the whistle," Melissa said. "They'd follow it up your hill, too, if the night's warm enough." She let the spiral drop back toward the hives. "But bees don't fly after dark, Wren. Cold air, no light. They stay home." "Then we give them light," Wren said. "Lanterns all the way up. We build the whole finale around them." Melissa studied her a long moment. Then she nodded once. "I'm in. But if this fails, it fails in front of everyone." Wren shook her hand hard. She had her attraction: a moonlit centennial at the observatory, bees dancing in lantern light, fireworks to close it. She walked home grinning. Halfway down the hill, the grin faded. Bees would not fly in the cold. And centennial nights in Tanglewood turned cold.