The Night Her Candle Spoke

Weekly Quickie Contest - Round 375

They said she’d gone mad after he drowned.
But madness, she thought, was just love that refused to quit breathing.

Every Halloween, Maren lit a single candle by the window that faced the black marsh. It was a ritual now: marigolds in a chipped vase, a slice of bread for memory, a whisper for courage. She never said his name aloud, not since the river took him. Some names open doors, and she wasn’t ready to find out which ones.

The villagers said the veil was thin again. Chickens wouldn’t roost. Dogs barked at nothing. The church bells tolled once, unbidden. Maren only smiled. She knew what the thinning meant: the air softens, the world forgets its edges, and for one breath of a night, even the dead remember how to find the way home.

Tonight the candle flickered sideways, not up. The flame bent as though bowing to something unseen.

“Jonas?”

The flame steadied.

Her knees went weak. “If that’s you, you can’t stay long. The dead don’t belong where the light remembers them.”

Outside, reeds whispered. Wind pressed against the glass. The wick hissed once, then twice, like laughter caught in its throat. She took it as an answer.

He used to laugh like that, back when his hands smelled of cedar and smoke, when his voice could fill the small house and chase away silence. Before the storm took him, before the river swallowed the boat whole and left nothing but quiet. Before she felt his absence settle into her bones and thought, This is what eternity feels like.

The room thickened. Shadows leaned inward.

“Maren.”

His voice came from the candle, low, cracked, beautiful.

She gripped the table. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I know.”

The flame stretched taller, reaching toward her face. Her breath turned visible. He was near.

“You can’t stay,” she whispered, though her hand moved closer anyway. “They’ll drag you back.”

“I don’t mind the dragging,” he said. “If I get to take you with me.”

Her heart stumbled. She had begged the river for this every year, half hoping it would never answer. “I can’t cross yet.”

“You already have.”

The candle went out.

But the room stayed lit, a soft underwater glow that pulsed with every heartbeat she had left. The walls breathed. The clock stopped. From the reflection in the glass, she saw him standing behind her, not shadow, not smoke, but light shaped into a man. His eyes carried the hue of twilight, half alive, half gone.

He lifted his hand. She raised hers to meet it on the windowpane. Cold met warmth. Between their palms, the veil trembled. For a breath, they were one body again, divided only by the thin skin of existence.

“Do you still love me?” he asked.

“Enough to drown twice.”

He smiled, tender and wrecked. “Then let go.”

The glass began to hum, a note pitched somewhere between prayer and breaking. Her pulse matched it. She could taste the marsh air now, metallic, wet, full of forgotten songs. Behind them, the candle relit itself in a blue flame that cast no heat, only memory.

Outside, the tide turned, and the reeds bowed in a slow, reverent dance. The world smelled of salt and cedar and endings.

“If I come with you,” she said, “promise I won’t forget how to love.”

He stepped closer until the shimmer between them thinned to nothing. “Love’s the only thing the veil can’t eat.”

When he kissed her, the light fractured into a thousand small suns. Her body trembled, then quieted. The candle flared, then folded inward like a closing flower.

At dawn, the villagers saw smoke curling from her chimney and thought she’d finally found peace. By noon, the house was silent. The window was shattered inward, the wick burned to its end, and the marsh smelled faintly of cedar and saltwater.

They buried her beside the river, the place she had always faced. The priest spoke of deliverance; the children whispered of ghosts. But those who passed by on still nights swore they saw two reflections in the broken glass, hands still touching, faces luminous with something softer than life.

And if you listen long enough to the hush between the tides, you can hear them breathe each other’s names, over and over, like a prayer that refuses to die.

(724 words)