he greeted, smiling. He held a piece of wood in one hand and a small knife in the other, whittling tiny flakes that drifted to the steps between his feet. The block in his hand had taken on the vague likeness of some four-legged beast, though it was still unrecognizable. He would spend months, sometimes years, on a particular piece, though I remembered he never kept the figurines that he finished, placing them in the woods outside the temple, returning them to nature.
“Hello, Master Isao,” I said. “It’s a nice morning.”
“It is. Very peaceful.” He nodded to the sun-warmed steps of the main hall. “Sit with me a moment, won’t you, Yumeko-chan?”
Uh-oh, what had I done this time? I picked my way up the steps and sat next to my mentor, trying to remember if I had gotten into any trouble with Denga or Nitoru. I didn’t think I had, though my memories of today seemed scattered and hazy. The sun was warm on my skin, and several birds sang in the branches of the nearby trees. It was quiet here, very peaceful, as Master Isao had said, but something nagged at me. A feeling I couldn’t quite place.
“Where is everyone, Master Isao?” I asked, glancing up at him. I couldn’t remember seeing Denga, Jin or Nitoru today.
“Around,” Master Isao replied, continuing to whittle chips from the wood block in his hand. “I see them occasionally. From time to time, our paths will cross. But they have their own paths to walk now. Their own terms and conclusions to reach. I cannot guide them down these roads—they must find their own way to the beginning.”
“I don’t understand, Master Isao.”
“Yumeko-chan.” Master Isao’s voice was firm. He lowered the items in his hands and stared at me, his dark eyes kind but intense. “You are not supposed to be here now,” he said, making me frown in confusion. “Your mission is not complete. You still have an important task to fulfill. Do you remember?”
A chill went through me. I gazed around the peaceful garden, trying to recall how I got here, and couldn’t. “I...don’t remember,” I stammered, feeling something hovering at the tip of my consciousness, just out of reach. “What do you mean, I’m not supposed to be here?”
Master Isao gave me another grave look, and pointed a long finger to something across the gardens.
I followed his hand, seeing the dark edges of a forest beyond the temple gate. Shadows cloaked the trees and undergrowth, and it seemed that where the temple grounds ended and the forest began, the sunlight simply stopped, as if it couldn’t penetrate any farther.
At Master Isao’s unspoken urging, I rose and walked halfway across the yard, peering into the darkness looming at the edge of the grounds. As I got closer, I could see a faint curtain of mist separating the temple from the forest, and for some reason, it caused goose bumps to scurry up my arms.
There was a figure sitting beneath a tree in the shadows of the forest, shoulders hunched, head bowed. He cradled a body in his lap, her skin as pale as rice paper, a bushy fox tail lying motionless on the ground.
The world seemed to pause, the air around me growing misty and surreal. In a daze, I turned back and found Master Isao sitting on the steps as before, his body hazy and transparent in the sunlight. He gave me a sad, gentle smile and shook his head.
“It is not time for you to cross the veil, Yumeko-chan,” Master Isao told me, his voice softer than the breeze overhead. “Soon, perhaps, we will see each other again. But not now. The fate of the world is balanced on the thinnest of threads, and the Dragon casts the whole kingdom in his shadow. Your part in the story is not yet finished. You must see it through to the end.” Master Isao gazed down at the wood in his hands and began carving again, splinters falling away into the dirt. “He is calling for you, Yumeko-chan,” he murmured. “Can’t you hear him? You don’t want to keep him waiting too long, or his soul might fall into darkness again. He needs your light to guide him to the