The stump is a throne for rot, which is a rude way of saying it is busy being food.

The glow is green and shy. It does not wander. It lives in the wood like a held breath. You put your hand near it. No heat. Jonah whispers, “Corpse candle,” because he has been waiting his whole life to say it on purpose.

You remember a better name: foxfire. Some fungi in rotting wood make a faint light—chemistry in living threads, not a soul on an errand. The threads look like pale stitching if you lean in with the lantern off. With the lantern on, the glow almost vanishes. That is a clue: it is dim, real, and easily bullied by brighter light.

Jonah swallows. “It’s… prettier than I wanted.”

A pea-sized crumb of bark is loose, still faintly lit, like a firefly that forgot to blink. You could take it in a jar from your pocket—Aunt Mara keeps one in the notebook’s back flap for “do not eat, do show later.”

Farther down, at the boat shed, the mast is doing a different trick: a gentle blue-white along wet metal, as if the sky had signed its name.