To Keep the Sun in a Jar

The 'No Trespassing' sign was more rust than paint, its warning bleached by a decade of August suns. Chloe pushed past it without a glance, her worn boots sinking into the soft pine needles that carpeted the path. Maya followed, the empty jam jar clinking against the trowel in her bag. The air under the trees was already cooler, thick with the smell of damp earth and decay—the first hint that autumn was winning.

"Are you sure this is the right spot?" Maya asked, her voice quiet. The woods always made her feel like she was interrupting something.

"It's always the right spot," Chloe said over her shoulder. "The big birch that looks like a wishbone, fifty paces west. Same as every year." Her tone was flat, clipped. They hadn't really talked on the walk up from town, and the silence had been heavy, full of unsaid things about packing boxes and bus tickets.

They'd been doing this since they were twelve. The ritual of the last Saturday in August. They'd hike to the abandoned quarry, find the one spot where the sun hit the ground last before it dipped behind the ridge, and they would dig. They'd scoop up a handful of the sun-warmed earth, seal it in a jar, and keep it on Maya's windowsill all winter. A way of trapping summer. It had been Chloe's idea, back when her ideas were still about magic and not about foundation courses and getting a flat in the city.

They found the wishbone birch. The clearing was just ahead, a wide scar of granite and limestone dust surrounded by whispering pines. The sun was low, throwing long, distorted shadows across the clearing. A few hardy weeds pushed up through cracks in the rock, their leaves already tinged with yellow.

"See?" Chloe pointed with the trowel. A single, perfect patch of light, no bigger than a dinner plate, lay on the dusty ground. "Last call for sunshine."

She knelt down and started to dig, the metal trowel scraping against stone. The sound was loud in the stillness. Usually, the woods were alive with the buzz of late insects and the chatter of birds. Today, there was nothing. Just the scrape of the trowel and the sound of their breathing.

A Heavy Light

"You're not even going to say it," Maya said, watching Chloe scoop the dark, almost-glowing earth into the Bonne Maman jar.

"Say what? The stupid words? We're sixteen, May. I think we can stop pretending to be witches." Chloe didn't look at her. She just kept packing the soil in, pressing it down with her thumb.

"It's not about being witches," Maya retorted, stung. "It's… it's the tradition. It's what we do." *It’s for us*, she wanted to scream. *It's the only thing left that's just us.*

Chloe screwed the red-and-white checked lid onto the jar. "There. Summer is officially canned. Happy?" She stood up, dusting off her jeans, and held the jar out to Maya.

Maya took it. And nearly dropped it. "God, what did you put in here? Rocks?" It was impossibly heavy, a dead weight that seemed to pull all the strength from her arm. It was far heavier than a simple jar of dirt had any right to be.

"Don't be dramatic." Chloe rolled her eyes, but Maya saw a flicker of something in them. Confusion? She took the jar back, and her own arm sagged under the strain. "Weird. Must be damp."

"It's not damp, Chloe. It's heavy." Maya looked from the jar to her friend's face. The last sliver of sunlight vanished from the clearing, plunging them into the cool blue of twilight. At the exact moment the light went out, the silence in the woods broke. But it wasn't a bird or an insect. It was a hum. A low, bass note that seemed to come from the ground, from the trees, from the very air around them. And the jar in Chloe's hand was vibrating.

"What is that?" Maya whispered, her eyes wide.

Chloe stared at the jar. The rich soil inside seemed to be glowing, a faint, pulsing light that shone through the glass. The hum grew louder, more intense. It wasn't just in the air anymore; Maya could feel it in her bones, in her teeth.

"I don't know," Chloe breathed, her bravado gone, replaced by a raw fear that mirrored Maya's own. "It's never done this before."

"Maybe we shouldn't have skipped the words," Maya said, half-serious.

"This isn't happening because we didn't say some rhyming garbage we made up when we were twelve!" Chloe snapped, but her voice trembled. She tried to put the jar down on a flat rock, but her hand was shaking too much. "What did we do?"

The checked metal lid of the jar began to bulge upwards, straining against the threads. The light inside intensified, no longer a gentle pulse but a steady, angry glare. The humming solidified into a single, pure, resonant tone that made the pebbles at their feet dance. They had come here to perform a childish ritual to mourn the end of summer. They had forgotten that some traditions exist for a reason, and that some things don't like to be trapped.

"We have to open it," Maya said, backing away. "Let it out."

"Are you insane? We don't know what 'it' is!" Chloe clutched the jar to her chest, as if to contain the power within it. The light from the soil illuminated her face from below, casting strange, dancing shadows.

"It's summer!" Maya insisted, the idea feeling both ridiculous and profoundly true. "We bottled it, and it's angry. We have to let it go."

The argument was pointless. Before either of them could move, a thin crack of light appeared around the rim of the lid. With a sound like singing metal, the lid tore itself from the jar and shot into the air, a tiny metal disc swallowed by the darkness. A wave of heat and pressure erupted from the jar, knocking them both backwards. It didn't feel like an explosion; it felt like a release. A deep, primal sigh.

They lay on the cold ground, stunned, their ears ringing. The jar lay on its side, empty. The soil was scattered across the rock, and it was just dirt now. Dark, inert, and cold.

The woods were no longer silent. The crickets had started their nightly chorus, and an owl hooted somewhere deep in the pines. The air, which moments before had felt charged and tense, was now just ordinary, cool night air.

Chloe sat up slowly, rubbing her head. "What… what was that?"

Maya pushed herself onto her elbows, her heart still hammering against her ribs. She looked at the empty jar, then at Chloe, whose face was pale in the moonlight. The fragile thread that had held their friendship together all summer long hadn't just frayed; it had been scorched away by whatever they had just unleashed. And as the first truly cold breeze of the coming autumn rustled the leaves above them, Maya knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that this wasn't over. They hadn't just let summer go. They had set it free.