Woman with crescent moon and stars line design

Brackenmouth had sold its moon, you understand. Not all of it, only the crescent, which the watchmakers hung on a brass hook above the tower face so the hours would know when to turn. Nobody had asked the city. By the time the bailiffs came round for the rates, the lamps on Gallow Row had been dark for a month, the bakers were working by candle, and the dogs would not stop howling at the empty sky. Ysolde had a crown of old railing spikes she wore to frighten her brothers, and her mother's red cloak. When she heard the bells strike midnight with no moon behind them, she put on her boots and went.

The climb took her past the swallows' nests and the cold brass ribs of the bell frame, and the wind caught her cloak until it streamed out behind her like a sail with no harbour to reach. Above the tower the stars were thick as spilt salt. She reached the hook. The moon was no bigger than a fingernail and cold as a coin from the bottom of a well, and when she lifted it, the whole city gasped below. The watchmaker, a thin man with a voice like a rusted hinge, climbed up after her and asked what she meant to pay. Ysolde thought of the bread, the lamps and the howling dogs. Then she took off her crown and gave him the spikes one by one until he had enough iron to make a new hook.

So she carried the moon down in her two hands and hung it back over Brackenmouth, and the lamps came on one by one along Gallow Row like children being called in for supper. Her hair, they say, still blows across the sky on windy nights, and if you watch the points of the stars you will see them lean towards her. Now off you go. Mind the lamp.