The Lantern of Willow Hill - 24-page picture book

The Lantern of Willow Hill

At the top of Willow Hill lived June, a nine-year-old girl with two long brown braids and a red wool scarf, and her little brother Theo, who was six and never went anywhere without his green knitted hat.

They lived with their grandfather, Papa Ellis, a tall man with a white mustache and a brown wool sweater. Every night he set an old copper lantern on the windowsill. "It has lit my way home for fifty years," he said.

One windy evening, the lantern was gone. The window stood open, and a trail of small muddy paw prints led across the sill and out into the night.

"A thief with four paws!" Theo whispered. June grabbed her flashlight. "Come on. We'll bring it back before Papa wakes up."

The paw prints led them across the meadow, where the tall grass bent silver under a round white moon.

At the edge of the Whispering Woods, the children stopped. The old trees creaked like doors in an empty house.

"I'm not scared," Theo said, holding June's hand very tightly.

Deep among the trees, a small golden light bobbed along the path. It was the copper lantern, swinging from the jaws of a red fox with a white tip on the end of her tail.

"Hey! That's Papa's lantern!" June called. The fox froze for a heartbeat, then darted away.

The children chased her over a mossy fallen log and under a curtain of hanging vines, all the way down to a silver stream.

The fox leapt across three flat stepping stones. June held Theo's hand and helped him hop from stone to stone. "One, two, three!"

On the far bank, the fox slipped into a hollow between the roots of a great old oak tree.

June knelt and shone her flashlight inside. Three tiny fox cubs blinked back at her, curled around the glowing lantern.

The mother fox stood in front of her cubs with her ears flat. She was frightened, but she did not run.

"They're cold," Theo said softly. "The lantern is keeping them warm."

June unwound her red wool scarf and tucked it gently around the cubs. The mother fox watched, and slowly her ears came up.

Theo pulled off his green knitted hat and laid it beside the scarf. "You can keep it," he told the smallest cub.

Then June lifted the copper lantern, and the cubs snuggled deeper into the scarf and the hat.

When the children turned to leave, the fox trotted ahead of them, her white-tipped tail showing them the way home.

She led them back across the stepping stones, under the hanging vines, over the mossy log, and out of the dark woods.

At the edge of the moonlit meadow, the fox stopped, looked back once, and vanished into the tall grass.

Papa Ellis was waiting at the front door in his striped dressing gown. "Where have you two been?"

June held up the glowing lantern. "Bringing your light home," she said. Theo grinned. "And we made a friend."

All that winter, Papa Ellis left a bowl of scraps beside the old oak tree, and every morning it was empty, with a trail of small paw prints leading home.