Final Gathering

A light-gatherer zips across the morning pond to his mayapple village beneath the oaks, struggling with an upset stomach. Light from a ruby red feather—gifted by a hummingbird—sparkles outward from his tiny heart. Stores of captured starlight, moonglow, and suncrumbs pattern his fluttering wings like an enchanted mural. And in his hands are two sloshing buckets: trout iridescence and nightjar eyeshine.

The fairy spirals to a clumsy landing atop the mossy rock. A yawning dryad waves her leafy hand. Kin awaken, begin to gather about him. “Is that all?” one complains, his internal light flickering low. “You’ve been gone for days.” The light-gatherer starts to dispense his load—the bulk of it will go to the young. “The human city grows near,” he says, still catching his breath. “At night, it smothers stars. By day its mechanical teeth crunch through forest and field. I heard but a single thrush, but two bobolinks. And fireflies sleep in gardens where I cannot go.”

Coughing, the light-gatherer vomits a splash of cold, artificial light; he begins to shiver. The others take a step back. “Their light,” he goes on, wiping his chin, “does not mix with the light we know. It tears it apart, swallows it, throws the rest out of proportion.” He stumbles, is caught by another. His heart begins to crystallize, to crumble at the edges; his fingers curl like the legs of an old spider skin.

“It is time for us to leave,” he says weakly, eyes moist with the dappled light of a woodland stream. “I...I can no longer gather enough energy to sustain us. I’m sorry.” With those words, the fairy collapses to his knees and tips over like a blown leaf. In a flickering heap, a spectacular array of natural light drains out of him, forming a stream through the moss. There it waterfalls over the edge of the rock and sinks into trembling earth.

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 2022.