Ellis was already in the field, waiting with an empty lantern in her hand, when the sun kissed the horizon. The fresh green on the vines grew mottled with evening light, dripping with the last dregs of early spring warmth. A chill gust of wind drew goosebumps along Ellis’s arms. She shivered, pulling her cloak tighter, and waited for the magic to appear.

It grew in clumps like stars, a bit of magic glowing in the shadows of trees first, where the black of night already blanketed the ground. Pinpricks of sunlight lingered on blades of grass like harvest cherries even as the sun ripened and dipped further behind the mountains.

A bit of magic gathered in the shadows of the grapevines where Ellis stood. Warmth radiated from the sunlight where it clung like dew to the grass, and she turned to scoop it into her lantern.

In the darkening sky, stars appeared to mirror the magic gathered below. Their stark white light was pale next to the warm glow of magic. The sun now was only a sliver on the mountain top, its evening colors bleeding into the magic scattered through the valley.

Ellis hunted for the noonday magic, bright as a sparrow’s song on the crowns of trees. She shook branches to knock it down, and the magic dripped in thick syrupy globs into her lantern. Her feet were slick with the crisp edges of early sunset.

It was only the deepest shadows, where magic gathered under bough of tree or in a hollow of the field, where the burnt ends of the day curled like the fringe of sky that still lingered against the mountaintops. Ellis scooped her fingers through a swath of the honey-sweet magic and trickled it into the very top of her lantern, softening the harshest of the noonday sun with its worn edges.

The lantern now was so full that magic sloshed over the rim and splattered Ellis’s legs. Carefully, she screwed the lid back on. It was enough to light the house for the night, and a bit to practice enchantments besides. As she walked home, the lantern carving a wide berth of daytime from the darkness, she rolled a thimbleful of sunlight between her thumb and forefinger. By morning, when the sunset reversed its twilight hues into rosy dawn, the magic would fade to ash. But right now, all the possibilities of a new day rested in the palm of her hand.

She smiled. Her feet left tracks through the puddles of sunlight. Overhead, white stars swam in a velvet sky, bright as magic against the darkness.