Legend CXXXVII – The Lantern Keeper of Graustein

More about Legend CXXXVII – The Lantern Keeper of Graustein

In the cloister of the abandoned Graustein Monastery, where the wind stirred like a weary monk between the arches and the footsteps of the past still slumbered in the lime of the walls, a being known to people as the Lantern Keeper had lived for countless years. He was small as a child, yet his eyes were as old as well water, and on his green head grew a tuft of hair like fresh moss, as if the forest itself had given him a sign. In his right hand he carried a lantern whose light did not flicker but breathed, and in his left a staff of bone, upon which a brightly polished skull smiled, as if it knew a joke that no one understood anymore. No one remembered when the Keeper had first appeared; some said he had crept from the foundation when the last abbot died, others claimed he was the ghost of a novice who had been too curious. The only certainty was that he never spoke, yet heard everything, for even the sparrows lowered their voices when they nested beneath the cloister windows. One autumn evening, a wandering scribe named Jorun lost his way to Graustein, searching for old chronicles to copy for a wealthy collector. He found the gate open, as if someone had been waiting for him, and stepped into the courtyard, where the scent of damp stone and forgotten prayers hung in the air. There he met the Lantern Keeper, standing before a colonnade, his lamp shining down on the ground as if guiding an invisible child. Jorun was frightened at first, but the figure gazed at him with such patience that his fear turned to curiosity, and he followed the little guardian through the corridors. They came to a library whose shelves resembled the ribs of a sleeping animal, and on the tables lay books whose pages stirred without a breath of wind. The Keeper opened one of them and pointed to a place where Jorun's own name was written, even before he was born, and beneath it a list of paths he could have taken. The scribe understood that Greystone was not a place, but a memory, and that the lantern carried the light of those possibilities forgotten by men. That night, Jorun heard voices from within the walls, soft as rain, and the skull on the staff nodded in time to them, as if accompanying a silent song. The Keeper eventually led him to a window overlooking the entire cloister, and there Jorun recognized figures from his life: the father he had left too soon, a woman whose letter he had never answered, a friend he had lost out of pride. The being placed the lantern in his hands, and for a heartbeat, the scribe was allowed to choose which of the paths he wished to tread anew. But he hesitated, for each possibility demanded that another must die, and so he returned the light like a borrowed heart.