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This switcher only changes the instructions — the reading is always in English.
In bold: key vocabulary. Tap any word in the text to see its definition.
When Tomas took the job at the lighthouse on Gull Island, the old keeper gave him one piece of advice. Tomas, whose older brother fished these waters on a boat called the Marta, had wanted to live close to the sea. "Keep the lamp lit, keep the log, and don't ask the tower where it wants to go." Then the old man sailed away, laughing, and never came back.
For two weeks, Tomas kept the lamp lit, and everything seemed ordinary. Then, one morning, he noticed that the wooden gate of the garden was half a meter from the place where he had left it. Another morning, the shed door seemed to face the sea instead of the path. He told himself that he was tired. But on the fifth day, he drew a white line on the ground around the base of the tower. In the morning, the line was a hand's width away from the wall.
The lighthouse was moving. It moved in the night, slowly, without a sound, like a patient old animal. Tomas wrote down the new measurements in his log. After a month, he understood that it was going north, toward a part of the coast where the rocks were sharp, and the fog was thick.
He did not know why, until a stormy night in October. The wind howled, and the sea was as black as tar. From the window, Tomas saw the light of a small boat, far out, sailing straight for the northern reef. His stomach turned cold. The boat was the Marta, and his brother was on it. There was no time to call anyone, and no radio worked in that weather.
He climbed the stairs two at a time and turned the great lamp as fast as he could. Its beam swept across the water, but the boat was too far, and the light did not reach it. Then the whole tower shuddered. Tomas held on to the railing. Through the window, the coast slid past, rock by rock, until the lamp hung right above the dangerous reef, and its beam lit the waves around the boat.
Tomas watched through the glass as the Marta turned hard to the left, away from the rocks, and into deep water. She was safe. When the storm ended at dawn, the lighthouse stood once more in its usual place, and the white line was a hand's width from the wall. Only a path of wet footprints in the grass showed where it had been.
That evening, Tomas opened the old keeper's logbook at the last page, which he had never read. There was a single line, in a shaky handwriting: "It only moves when someone is lost." Tomas looked out at the quiet sea, wondering who would be lost tomorrow.
