The Radiant Road by Katherine Catmull

tangle of water and stone and life.
    She stood, turned, ran home. As she jumped across the brook, she thought it sang to her.

    The brook did sing. It sang its warning song. But Clare does not yet have ears to hear when the world sings to her through brook or wind or bird.
    This was the brook’s song: He comes closer, he comes closer, the destroyer comes closer to your nest.

    â€œI met a boy today,” Clare told her father when she got home.
    He seemed distracted, fiddling with the phone in his hand. “Oh, good,” he said. “And what’s his name?”
    Clare felt she should know this. He knew mine. Clare felt around her heart, looking for the name. She looked up to see if her father was waiting for her answer. But he was already ducking down the passage toward the door, frowning at his phone, going outside for better reception.
    â€œFinn,” she said into the empty room. Now she remembered. “His name is Finn.”

    Late that night, Clare slipped from her high bed, bare feet on the whitened wood. Her flannel pajamas were too thin for the cold, so she pulled the comforter around her and held it close with one hand as she climbed down the ladder. What she had been wild to do this afternoon now seemed a terrible idea.
    I don’t have to go all the way in tonight , she told herself. I could just look and be sure this is safe.
    But she knew she’d go in. She was as curious as a cat—and as tense as a cat.
    The blanket rasped softly along the floor, so she gathered it up. Her father’s low, slow breaths behind the screen calmed her. She found the tree in the dark and knelt down beside it. Blind, feeling with her hands, she found the place where the tree split. Was it one tree that tore itself in two? Or two trees that grew together?
    In went her arm, and her arm felt a change. The comforter slipped to the floor. She turned sideways. It was tight—she was no toddler now. But piece by piece, wriggling and stretching, Clare pulled herself inside the tree. The more of her made it in, the more her blood swirled with joy; all her body’s cells hummed, yes, yes, yes.
    She was in. Her knee was pressed into her chest, her arm squeezed up above her. She felt like the drawing of Alice grown too big for the house.
    But soon the tree relaxed around her; it allowed her in. Or was she shaping herself to fit the space? They shaped themselves to fit each other, the tree and Clare. This is called making a home.
    Sitting comfortably now, arms around her knees, Clare waitedin the dark. Her blood vibrated like plucked strings. Where were the colored lights she remembered? For a moment she doubted, in the tunnel again: would the dark never end?
    But at the end of the tunnel, as with all tunnels, a tiny light appeared. The light was warm and white, and hovered near. Other tiny, hovering lights joined it, swarmed beside it. The lights blinked off and on.
    Fireflies.
    Lovely: but Clare felt a clutch of fear, remembering the glowing horror-mask in the sky. The lights she remembered from the tree were fireflies ? Did they even have those in Ireland?
    But these fireflies danced around her head with tender attention, blinking a silent, delicate song. The skin of her arms and knees glowed in their creamy light.
    Now at her feet came a wave of glimmering green, tiny green pinpricks of light that washed in and out, in and out, like a wave on the shore.
    Now over her head a translucent scarf of indigo and spring green folded, unfolded, refolded. “Northern lights,” whispered Clare.
    And still the blinking fireflies danced lightly around her, as the northern lights and the luminous green waves kept their own slow rhythms. These were the Christmas lights she remembered; the tree was full of living lights.
    How could something so Strange feel so strong and sure and home?
    Slowly, by the faint and many-colored lights, she began to make out details of the old tree: its skinned-knee pinkness, its hard