The lantern waited whenever Luna fell behind.
It floated at shoulder height, just beyond the reach of the rain. Its lacquered frame cast an amber circle over the wheel rut, revealing pebbles, old hoofprints and water that shone like a strip of beaten silver. When Luna stopped to free her wet sleeve from a thorn, the lantern stopped too.
When she walked, it moved.
When she hurried, it hurried.
Luna glanced back. The broken torii still stood between two cedars, framing her shrine yard in a narrow patch of blue-grey dawn. It had grown smaller, but not distant enough to explain how silent home had become. She could no longer hear the crows or the old man's complaints. Only rain whispered among the branches.
Ahead, the lantern gave an impatient bob.
“You were the one waiting for me,” Luna said.
It dipped once, which could have meant anything.
Luna lengthened her stride. The road curved around a stone fox with half its face buried in moss. Thick roots crossed the wheel ruts and had lifted a roadside marker until its carved arrow pointed at the sky. None of the trees looked young, yet the road beneath them had been built wide enough for carts.
The lantern paused beside a puddle.
Luna approached slowly, then lunged.
It skipped over her hands and sailed backward between two trunks.
“Oh, so now you can move quickly.”
Warm light winked from behind the first cedar, then the second. By the time Luna caught up, the lantern had returned to the road and was swaying with such innocence that she disliked it immediately.
She followed for another hundred steps before noticing the moon.
It hung backward above the forest, caught in the same narrow gap between two high branches. Luna watched it as the road bent left. The trunks changed. The gap did not. She walked until the gate behind her disappeared around the curve, but the moon remained precisely where it had been, down to one thin twig crossing its lower edge.
Luna stopped.
The lantern stopped.
“Does nothing here know how to continue?”
“That one does,” said a voice ahead. “She is simply enjoying your company.”
The lantern darted toward a cluster of warmer lights. They hung from the ribs of a broad parasol, each no larger than a plum. Beneath it stood a petite woman in a short festival coat and travelling boots, bright-eyed despite the impossible hour. Rain beaded on the dark lacquer above her without falling from its rim. Crescent-shaped charms chimed at her sleeves whenever she moved.
One lantern beneath the parasol had gone dim.
The woman tapped it with one finger. “No sleeping on duty.”
The wick brightened reluctantly.
“If you must sulk,” she added, “do it on your own time.”
Luna looked from the chastened light to the one that had led her. “Do they usually listen?”
“Never when witnesses are present.” The woman closed her parasol and held it over one shoulder. The little lanterns remained suspended beneath it, though the frame was no longer open. “Yomitsuki. Lantern Procession Guide, keeper of the road, and occasional supervisor of terrible employees.”
Luna pushed a strand of wet hair from her cheek. “Luna. Shrine maiden, finder of bells, and recent victim of one of those employees.”
The leading lantern hid behind Yomitsuki's shoulder.
Yomitsuki considered this. “The complaint procedure is extremely complicated.”
“I suspected as much.”
They began walking together. Yomitsuki's stride was light but practical. She stepped around the deepest water and over the roots without looking down, as if her feet knew a road her eyes did not need to see.
“Are you taking me to the bell?” Luna asked.
“No.”
The plain answer surprised her more than another riddle would have.
Yomitsuki pointed her closed parasol uphill. “I can take you to the roads that may lead toward it. I do not know which road holds your bell.”
Luna looked through the motionless branches above them. “Then what happened to the moon?”
“It became lazy.”
Luna waited.
Yomitsuki's teasing smile faded by a careful degree. “No one on these roads remembers seeing it move. We have records that say it once crossed the sky, but the oldest travellers inherited those records from people who inherited them. Here, night is not what follows evening. It is where everything has stopped.”
“For how long?”
“Long enough for roads to forget that arriving is their purpose.”
The lantern she had scolded gave a tiny cough of smoke and sagged beneath the parasol.
Yomitsuki stopped at once. “You see? One traveller arrives and she chooses today to be dramatic.”
She unlatched the lantern's brass base and passed Luna the closed parasol. Its weight surprised her. The suspended lights tugged in different directions like fish beneath dark water, but Yomitsuki steadied each one with a touch before kneeling beside the failing wick.
From one sleeve she produced a narrow pair of scissors, a twist of clean cotton and a corked vial of oil.
Luna shifted her grip as the lanterns tugged against the closed parasol. “You carry repair tools.”
“A guide who cannot mend a light is only someone with confident opinions.” Yomitsuki trimmed the blackened wick with two precise cuts. “Hold her level, please. She leans left when embarrassed.”
Luna corrected the lantern. “You know which one is embarrassed?”
“I know which one pretends to sleep, which one races downhill and which three cannot be trusted near moths.” Yomitsuki replaced the wick and coaxed a small flame from it. “They have habits. Habits become names if you spend enough nights together.”
“How many empty nights?”
For the first time, Yomitsuki's hands became still.
“I used to count,” she said. “Then some numbers began arriving twice.”
The repaired lantern brightened. Yomitsuki tapped its frame affectionately and stood.
“Why keep all of them lit if no one comes?” Luna asked.
“Because an unlit road does not wait politely. It closes, or it leads someone halfway and forgets the rest.” Yomitsuki took back the parasol. Her smile returned, quieter than before. “And because someone did come.”
Yomitsuki touched the mossy roadside marker as they passed. Someone had recently cleared the growth from its lettering. The lantern frames were polished too, their wicks trimmed and their paper unbroken.
Luna ran her thumb over one newly exposed stroke. “You still maintain them.”
“A guide who waits for travellers before tending the lights will greet them in darkness.”
“Do many come?”
Yomitsuki tilted her parasol so Luna could see the whole empty road behind them.
“That many.”
The joke landed softly. Luna looked at the immaculate lanterns again and understood the work concealed inside it.
Luna watched the empty road disappear around the rain-dark bend. “Then why do you look pleased?”
Yomitsuki glanced at the lantern Luna had tried to catch. “Because you chased her instead of obediently following. Uncertainty is one of the few things this night has not learned to repeat. I appreciate it when someone brings a little of her own.”
Yomitsuki weighed the closed parasol across one palm, as though assessing a debt. “What does a guide promise here?”
“A destination.”
“Expensive promise.”
“An honest direction, then.”
Yomitsuki smiled. “That I can afford.”
The lanterns opened around them.
Dozens rose from behind statues and tree roots, though the forest had seemed empty a breath before. Crescent sparks streamed between them, skipping over puddles in luminous curves. The brightest lantern swept away from the road. Luna followed its glow and nearly planted her foot in a washout hidden beneath white flowers.
Yomitsuki caught the back of her sleeve. “Pretty is not the same as trustworthy.”
The lights began to weave faster. They crossed and doubled, each offering a warm path through the trees. Luna stopped watching them. She watched Yomitsuki's boots instead.
Left of the split root. Across the flat stone. Beneath the low cedar branch.
Yomitsuki led without hurrying. Luna matched her steps. The procession whirled harmlessly around them, crescents chiming against the rain, until every false path folded back into light.
Yomitsuki touched the parasol's tip to the road. The last false light went out. “Better.”
Luna smoothed the damp cloth where Yomitsuki had caught it. “You could have warned me.”
“Then you would have watched my advice instead of the road.”
The forest opened around a cedar wider than Luna's shrine storehouse. A pale crescent scar marked its trunk. Beneath its branches, the wheel ruts divided cleanly into three roads.
Yomitsuki raised her parasol and named them in turn.
“The Scarlet Climb. The Procession Road. The Returning Road.”
Luna looked from one darkness to the next. “Which one do I take?”
“That,” Yomitsuki said, “is the first direction I cannot choose for you.”