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The first time Kurogane saw the Wisp was the night his father died.

He sat by the bed until his collar was damp with his mother’s tears and his father’s body was cold. Candlelight faltered over the walls and cast shadows in the corpse’s eyes, in his hollowed cheeks, until Kurogane couldn’t see his father in front of him anymore. No matter how the flames resisted, the night squeezed them back into pinpoints. His father’s was just the face of a dead man under their flickering.

Kurogane endured it as long as he could. He tried to remain, fists jammed into his legs, poise as steady as his enraged heartbeat would allow. He stayed with his mother and his family's friends and listened to them weep until he could no longer bear it. He felt a wretched ache in his chest when he seized his opportunity to leave - his mother had leaned away to let her cousin console her and Kurogane stood as soon as her weight was gone. A few eyes followed him to the door, but only silence followed him outside.

The air was bitterly cold compared to the sweat and tear filled hovel behind him. He stormed straight into it, feet beating the ground at a volume that seemed sacrilegious. He needed to get away.

His legs hurtled him through the dark before he could think. The cold scorched his throat as he sucked in breath after breath. He was good at this - he could just keep breathing, scrape his throat raw, inhale for as long as he needed to to remind himself he was alive. The dirt rose and dipped beneath his feet. His steps adjusted to the familiar tumble of the ground he'd walked for as long as he knew how, steep slope here, stone plateau there. At last, when he felt too heavy to keep going, he let gravity do its work and pull him to his knees.

The grass was damp on his palms. A breeze fumbled with his hair and cooled the sweat on his neck. The echo of voices back at the house seemed to be echoes alone, aural imprints, nothing more. They were gone. He was far away, and the only thing left was darkness.

This, Kurogane considered, was the first time he'd run away from anything. He stood up and brushed off his knees, realising for a drowsy moment that his mother would be displeased by him ruining his best clothing. He looked around to see where he'd arrived. The house lights were just visible on the plane of a hill in the distance behind him. Between that point and where he stood was the low-lying vegetation of the fields. The dark clung to everything between here and there.

This was the landscape that sustained them. It had sustained him and his mother and his father and their retainer, all his life. He kicked a clod of dirt and watched it twirl into the darkness. Beyond its arc was the swamp. It marked the edge of their domain, ruling with its own gnarled convolution the wilderness beyond.

The swamp was where he saw it. A flicker of movement passed between two trees and disappeared, and Kurogane assumed he'd seen an animal. It had been pale - perhaps an owl, from the way it glided. No, not an owl - it floated rather than flew. Kurogane didn't know what it was.

Something emerged again. Kurogane had to squint to see it, but when he did, he became certain it was no animal he'd heard of. An oversized lightning bug was the first thing that came to mind. The thing was roughly spherical and hovered on the edge of a shrub, buzzing back and forth like it couldn't commit to a single branch. It glowed. Kurogane thought of those candles if they had been bestowed with larger, brighter, more golden flames.

He followed it.

The swamp throbbed with the sounds of insects and the rush of creatures hiding as he passed. He looked back, and saw the trellises of the swamp curtain off the fields the deeper he went. He looked forward, and he saw the Wisp. It floated behind the barbs of the shrub, hiding in them as Kurogane approached. When he was close enough that he could have reached out and shaken the shrub to loosen it, it darted away again.

Kurogane hissed. He hadn't realised how dark it was without the thing for light. He spun and squinted, searching. A curse almost rolled off his tongue but halted when he spotted it again.

It was deeper in the swamp this time. He could see a ridge of roots and dirt underneath it, and the flat reflection of a dark pool beside that. The Wisp trailed over the surface of the water and sent little ripples gushing as Kurogane watched. It glided back and forth, swaying as though it expected him to be pleased with its performance before settling over the water again.

It lit the dark like his own personal star, so unlike the sobbing tremors of the candlelight in his house tonight. Still, he thought. He had to go home. His mother would return to the fields as soon as possible, and he wanted to be there to help her. The thing edged away and returned, always on the far side of the trees. If it had eyes, it would be watching him, too. But he couldn’t go into the swamp…

It wants me to follow, he thought. Kurogane felt something cold take hold inside his gut. How dare this thing - with his father's dying trembles still turning in memory, with his mother's tears driving the awful wheel onward - how dare this thing call him away now?

He turned and trudged through the swamp the way he came, pulling free when he felt something snag on his coat on the way out. He didn't look back until he was in the house again, and by now most of the funeral guests had gone into the other room, and it was just him and his mother and the corpse. But then, when everything was quiet and he didn't know whether it was yesterday or tomorrow, he noticed the weight in his pocket that hadn’t been there before. He fished inside it and felt the rough edges of a rock. By the candlelight of his father’s deathbed, it was a deep, faceted blue.

--

The next time Kurogane saw the Wisp, he was old enough to tell imagination from reality. Or so he believed.

He hauled another crate onto the wagon and wiped his brow. The autumn sun still burned some days, battling as it did with the cold evenings and blustery winds that followed it around. The heat of tired muscles combined with its radiance was enough to exhaust most people before noon.

"You have dirt on your face."

Kurogane frowned. He glared at his companion, and then at the dirt on his own hand, and rubbed it off on his pants. "What do you expect? We're transporting more mud than potatoes."

The retainer grinned and brushed a dead insect off of one of the crates. “That, my friend, is because we are not potato farmers.” He secured their final product - four jars of honey - into a bag on the side of the wagon. He beckoned Kurogane to the other side of the horse and took a rein in hand, leading the beast down the long path to the village. The wagon whined as it stumbled into a roll, and finally they were moving.

Kurogane grunted. "These fields better start churning up something useful or I'll have to go into the mountains to hunt."

His companion laughed. He was rarely one to acknowledge the morbidity of living from day to day on the fruits of a waterlogged plain on the edge of an irrelevant state. Kurogane liked him for that. He liked the way the retainer smiled wryly at the darkest of things, as though they would not be there to bother him some day.

"The bees should come back, more like. We should think about making preparations," he said. "Without an income, we’ll have to start making enough of our own food to feed the whole hillside, and I doubt five potatoes per head is going to cut it for an entire season.”

Kurogane didn't say anything for a while. He trudged along beside the horse, lifting a hand to nudge it onward occasionally. He didn’t really know how to hunt. His father had, but the beasts in the mountains around their home had mysteriously dwindled before he’d had a chance to teach Kurogane. After that, they’d subsided on crops and the income they earned from beekeeping, their oldest profession.

Kurogane lowered his hand to his pocket as he walked. The smooth faces and hard edges of the stone glided beneath his fingertips as it rolled around. He had kept it with him ever since he was a child, wondering from time to time whether his father was the one who had delivered it to him, or whether the thing he’d seen was something else entirely, and had planted it on him for its own mysterious reasons.

He hadn’t told anyone about the encounter except his mother. Her old sorcerer's magic was what kept the bees near and the locusts away, after all. In spite of the failings of the land even with all that magic, Kurogane knew how powerful his mother once was, and told her the story in whispers one sullen afternoon when he was fourteen.

She accepted his story as fact, but her surprise seemed more filled with concern than pleasure. “A Wisp, then? I haven’t heard of one in years.”

“Do you think it was father?”

Her lips pressed together and she tilted her head thoughtfully. “I don’t think that’s what they are. Sometimes they do speak, so I’ve been told. But I don’t know whether making conclusions about their nature would be all that helpful.”

Kurogane didn’t tell her about the stone after that. It didn’t seem right, as troubled as her eyes already were. And in any case, though he suppressed some guilt for it, he felt like the stone was his own little secret.

"Don't fret too much," the retainer said. Kurogane let go of the stone and looked up. "If anyone is to die this year, it will be old charlatans like me." He laughed again. Kurogane eyed him, gaze catching in the long, black hair and the youthful set to the mouth. The retainer caught him watching and he averted his eyes.

"You're not that old," he protested.

"I'm old enough."

They arrived at the village as the sun was receding into the cleft of a ridge, light scattering red and veil-thin through the streets. The alleyways and inns were clogging with people; shouts erupted on the other side of the square where two vendors were fighting for space in front of one of the more popular taverns. The night markets were beginning.

"Leave it to me," the retainer said as they docked their wagon at the usual spot, safely tucked beneath the awning of a middling inn. Kurogane raised his brows. "Go into the town, I mean," the retainer continued. "You won't have many chances after this for a while, I think."

Kurogane hesitated. He was not suspicious - he had no reason to be, after the years of devotion this man held precious. "Aren't you coming? We could finish up here quickly."

The retainer shook his head. "Go gather inspiration. Take in the scenery. You deserve it and I daresay you will need it." He pulled out the jars of honey and put them at the front of the wagon as he spoke. “I’ll leave a light on for you.”

Kurogane scoffed. The retainer gave him a final smirk and was suddenly approached by a gaggle of customers. Kurogane couldn't regain his attention after that and, dejectedly, retreated into the crowd.

He wandered through rows of wagons and past low-ceilinged inns, arms crossed. He knew there was little point objecting to the retainer's wishes; that's what they were. He wanted to be alone for the moment. All their talking had probably exhausted the man's energy for comfortable silences.

So Kurogane spent several hours doing as he'd been advised. He made three rounds of the main street, keeping close to the torches on the walls, until he decided on an inn to drink at. He stayed until the rowdiness rose to a cacophony. He had only spared enough money for one drink and by then was thoroughly disenchanted with the idea of waiting any longer for something to happen. He left in the same manner as he'd entered - with little purpose and a gnawing sense of annoyance.

The night was much younger than he'd imagined, he discovered upon asking the time from a server before he left. The wagon would still be half full, or fuller, if they were unlucky, and Kurogane didn't know what else to do but to keep walking, hand in his pocket.

He thought for the first time in a long time of his father's face and wondered if the retainer was thinking of the same. The face warped irreversibly with his own, now, mirrors having long been the only thing with which to remind himself of the shape of his father's jaw or the set of his eyes. Except his father had been able to wield a bow, and had known how to unite their little band on the hill with calm and bravery as they marched into the snowy seasons. All he could do was glare into the dark.

He looked up. He was on the edge of the village, facing the swamp where it curved around the hills and settled at a distance from the streets. The air was quiet. A woody smell wafted off of the grass stretching between him and the line of the trees, everything basking still under the black sky.

Kurogane grumbled. He had come too far without realising and was about to turn back when something caught his eye.

He didn't believe he'd seen it, at first. He remembered instantly the last time this thing had crossed his path, and didn't dare think it was happening again. He moved closer to the edge of the swamp. He was still several minutes' walk away, but he could see it there, rising and falling with the lethargy of drifting snow. He held his breath and looked straight at the sphere of light.

Kurogane looked back at the village. He could hear the muffled bustling of the night market and the clattering of wheels, and pictured with well-worn ease the congestion of the inns he and the retainer would usually stay at before returning home the following morning.

If he had any inclination to go back, it was only to see his companion. But his companion was not in the mood for company tonight.

He lowered his hand and felt the stone solid in his grip. He eyed the Wisp, wondering. Then, quick-footed and frowning, he plunged across the field.

He was a mere few steps away from the overgrowth when the Wisp flitted back a stone's throw, and this time he followed it deeper in. He was cautious of his surroundings - more than once he had to feel his way forward with eyes trained on the winding vines around him, and he gripped one of them tightly as he edged around a soggy track. The bristles of the plant agitated his skin and his shoes dampened with water, but he moved forward until he was again a few paces from the Wisp.

He stopped then, careful lest it should flee. But this time it stayed still. It hovered gently, almost thoughtfully over a fallen trunk, and edged away when Kurogane leaned forward.

"What do you want," Kurogane said. "Do you want me to follow or are you going to fly off again?"

He hadn't expected a response. He was reaching out his hand, slowly, easing into the movement, when the Wisp darted behind him.

"Surely we have more options than that."

Kurogane tensed. His hand flew to the back of his neck, to where he'd just felt someone's breath-

He jerked around. A man stood before him, tall and unmoving and silhouetted by the backlight of the Wisp. Kurogane couldn't see his face.

His hands lifted instinctively. "What are you?"

He heard a breathy laugh. The figure's shoulders shook and he tilted a head, assessing Kurogane from within the shadows. With his arms relaxed by his sides and his movements capped by a languid sort of grace, he didn't seem remarkably threatening. He wasn't even as tall as Kurogane, though he was close. His laughter trailed off into a satisfied 'hmm' that gave Kurogane the impression of a smile.

"What are you ?" the figure asked.

"Human, for a start," Kurogane growled.

"And I?" the man - creature responded, "What would I be?" Kurogane bared his teeth and the creature laughed again. As quickly as it made the sound, it disappeared.

Kurogane swung round to look for him. He spotted the Wisp first, back by the log. Beside it knelt the man. This time he could make out his features, illuminated by the faint light of the Wisp. His long, platinum hair was braided back from his face, loose strands falling about a slender neck and downturned eyes. His whole posture was nonchalant, clothing plain but draping over the bowed figure in a way that drew the eye. A gnarled, obnoxiously long hand rested on the log while another stayed folded inside its sleeve. He was like stone until he moved, turning his head away slightly.

"You have dirt on your face," he said.

Kurogane chose to ignore that observation. "I've seen you before, haven't I?" he said.

The man tilted his head. Kurogane still couldn't see his eyes. "In a sense," was the only reply.

"I nearly followed you into the forest last time we met."

"Hmm," the man pondered. "Yes, you did. People usually don't try silly things like that."

Kurogane’s frown deepened. The smile on the man’s mouth was irking him – was it there just to assure Kurogane that he was being unreasonable? “I’ve wanted to talk to you for a long time.”

“Then you could have opened with a more polite greeting.”

Kurogane’s hands balled into the fabric of his coat. “I wasn’t expecting to see-“ he waved a hand in the man’s direction, “- you .” A husky laugh filled the air. Kurogane grimaced. He took a step forward, towards the stream separating them, and then the light was gone.

“Hey!”

It was directly in front of him when it returned a second later. The Wisp hovered an arm’s reach from him now, and behind it stood the man. Kurogane could see his face clearly for the first time. He was startled to find that it was utterly human.

“You look stricken.” The corner of the man’s lips tugged upward. “Didn’t you want to speak to me?”

Kurogane took a steady breath in. “First of all,” he asked, gaze fixed on the man’s eyes, “Who are you?”

The man’s smile grew so the points of his teeth were visible. “Fai.”

“That’s it?”

Fai nodded sweetly. “For now, dirt boy."

"It's Kurogane," he spat. He put a hand to his pocket to check that the stone was still there. Its reassuring shape held firm beneath the fabric. “What about this,” he said, gesturing to his pocket. “Why did you give it to me?”

Fai looked taken aback. He eyed Kurogane’s face, then let his gaze drift down, down to Kurogane’s thigh. His lips curled up again, this time into a gleeful grin. “What am I supposed to be looking at?”

Kurogane stared. Fai’s narrowed gaze made him burn. “ This ,” he hissed, digging in his pocket for the stone and holding it out to Fai. A look of understanding fell over Fai’s features with a little ‘ah’. He shrugged.

“It’s a piece of fluorite,” Fai said.

Kurogane waited. Fai didn’t continue. “I figured as much,” Kurogane said, “but why do I have it?”

Fai’s shrug still sat awkwardly on his shoulders, like he was trying to hide under it. “I suppose I gave it to you.”

Kurogane felt his mouth fall open. He suppressed the urge to scoff. “Why?”

Fai looked determinedly away. He swayed on the spot, vacant eyes drifting over the canopy of the swamp. The light of the Wisp illuminated the planes of his face and the high curve of his cheeks like it was not night for him at all.

“No-one else would take it,” Fai said. “They always give it back.” Suddenly he turned on Kurogane again. “But you never once came back to try returning it. You just kept it for yourself! Inconsiderate man.”

Fai laughed again and spun away, the Wisp following at his heels. He hopped over the stream with a rustle of leaves, displacing a stone into the water as he went. Before Kurogane knew it, Fai was disappearing into the trees.

“Wait,” Kurogane said. Fai didn’t turn around. He felt panic rise in his chest. “Wait! We haven’t finished.”

Fai kept walking.

“If you don’t tell me what it is, I’ll lose it right here, in this stream.” He held the stone over the water. A cascade fell over a ridge of rocks directly beneath it.

Fai slowed. He lingered on the far bank, back turned. He did not speak for a long moment. “I could get it back from there,” he said at last. His voice was low.

“Yeah, well I couldn’t,” Kurogane said. “And I won’t come here again.”

“What do you think you’re doing to me by throwing it away?”

Kurogane felt his heart start to slow. Fai didn’t turn back, but something in his tone made Kurogane pause. He realised what he was doing and pulled his hand back to cradle the stone against his body. He looked at the rushing water and back at the stone and felt his ears burn. “You sound like you’re alone,” he offered. It was meagre in the face of what he’d just done. He pictured himself standing there like a menace in the dark and clenched his teeth. “I just want to know what happened. You came to me on the worst night of my life and made me remember it for something... else .” He nudged a stone into the water and watched it drop with a splash. “And I don’t know why.”

He waited. A whole minute passed and still he did not look up, but the tiny light on the edge of his vision did not waver. For that he was grateful.

“Come to me,” Fai said. Kurogane looked up. The man stood in the trees on the ridge of the far bank, elevated above Kurogane so that he looked like a figure from a play, drenched in light. Kurogane could not dismiss the sudden overwhelming feeling that accompanied the sight. He felt his chest tighten.

Kurogane looked at the stream, and then back at the edge of the swamp. He could barely see the field beyond it. “I’ll come,” Kurogane said. “But promise me you won’t leave me in here.” He was embarrassed to admit it, but it was true. “I don’t know how to get back. And I hate...” He sighed.

“You hate?”

“The dark. I can’t stand it.”

Fai made a sound that indicated he understood. “I won’t leave you. But you’d better be kind to me,” he said with a grin. Kurogane could barely hear him over the drone of the swamp. His voice was a whisper. “I like you.”

Kurogane considered Fai’s turned figure for a long moment. At last, he stepped into the stream. He could see the top of the rock ridge under his feet and edged along it, stepping over protruding stones and holding onto branches to ease him along until he was on the other side. He climbed over the edge of the ridge and felt a strong hand clasp his own at the last moment, pulling him up.

Fai’s hand felt strange. It was rough and warm but for a second Kurogane felt like he could grasp right through it.

He had time to consider the sensation as Fai held on to him for a second longer, letting go at last with a contemplative hum. “That really was inconsiderate of you, before.” He turned away and walked ahead of Kurogane, strands of hair catching loose in the breeze.

“I’m sorry,” Kurogane said. His voice was still gruff and he frowned at himself. “I’m angry, but I’m not making excuses.”

Fai clicked his tongue. The Wisp hovered around them as they walked, neither speaking. Kurogane wanted to bring up the stone again. It was now safe in his pocket, its weight there to remind him of how close he’d come to throwing it away. He decided to let Fai broach the topic when he felt like it, pushing aside the myriad other questions he wanted to ask – what are you, where are we going, why this – when Fai began to speak.

“I’m drawn to death.”

Kurogane stared. “Excuse me?”

“When I saw you the first time,” Fai elaborated, “you were thinking of death. It opened up in front of you.”

“My father had just died.”

“There. That must have been it.”

Kurogane frowned. “Why did that bring you to me?”

Fai shrugged. “I don’t remember, to be honest. I only remember you and how upset you were, and I remember leaving the crystal in your coat pocket.”

“I didn’t see you,” Kurogane said.

“No,” Fai said, similarly perplexed. “No, I don’t think I was really there.” He lifted his arms as he walked to demonstrate the difference. The sleeves of his coat fell in folds at his elbow as he drifted ahead, dancerlike, crushing the soil underfoot.

“Why didn’t you follow me that night?” Fai asked. “Or rather, why are you following me now?”

“Now?” Kurogane scoffed. “Because I’ve wanted to know what you were ever since then. But that night - well, clearly, I was busy.”

“Was there a funeral?” Fai asked. Kurogane lifted his brow but got no response. Fai’s face was still stubbornly turned away.

“Yes. That’s what I went back to.” He shrugged. “And besides, my mother always used to say there were things in the swamp and that I could get lost…” He laughed, but only half-heartedly.

Fai slowed. His head tilted as he appeared to consider some inconsequential rock. Kurogane slowed down in turn, convinced Fai would fly off ahead again if he tried to keep pace. “Maybe you should listen to her.”

“I did,” Kurogane said. “I’ve never been this deep in before.”

Fai walked on briskly again. “Why are you following me?”

“Because you wanted me to,” Kurogane said. The irritation was back in his voice. “I think.”

“And why trust me?”

That one was harder to answer. But Kurogane kept walking, always a few steps behind Fai. “I don’t know. You said you wouldn’t leave me in here.”

Fai was quiet after that. But to Kurogane’s satisfaction, he didn’t speed up or try to run away.

“I’ve seen dark things,” Kurogane murmured. “I don’t get that feeling from you.”

Fai looked back at him this time. He was not smiling or even smirking - just watching. If for only a second, Kurogane saw his face flicker with something like sadness or gratitude, and then it turned away again.

“Nobody has said that to me before,” he said. “In fact, nobody has said much to me for a long time.”

Kurogane shrugged. He batted at the Wisp and snarled happily when it dodged him, scattering light over the trees. “I’ve got until morning. We can talk.”

Fai nodded. “I’d like that.”

Kurogane followed Fai deep into the night. Fai led him under crags and bowers and pointed out his favourite rock formation, which was a spiky ledge that made Kurogane raise his brows. But he never interrupted when Fai talked, his enthusiasm growing and growing as he introduced Kurogane to what seemed to be his domain. It didn’t escape Kurogane just how bizarre this encounter was. He asked more than once what Fai was, and each time Fai threw his hands up and declared that he was rude, brutish, monstrous. And then he’d laugh. Kurogane felt his own smile break at the sound.

They conversed and wandered for what felt like only hours before the sky cracked grey between the branches.

“Oh,” Fai said at length. “It’s getting late for me.” He turned around and pointed at Kurogane’s pocket. “I still haven’t told you what that is.”

Kurogane started. He’d forgotten all about the stone or crystal or whatever it was. “Wait, you’re leaving?”

Fai laughed. His lips barely lifted at the edges, voice low, gaze fickle. “Bring it back here at nightfall and I’ll come.” The Wisp suddenly flickered – Kurogane thought for a second he saw something jagged and black underneath it. “We won’t be able to talk during the day.”

Kurogane looked at Fai for a long time before looking around for a path back and realising he had no idea where they were. “Wait. I told you I don’t know the way out of this place.” He turned back, but Fai was gone.

Very suddenly, Kurogane was alone.

He cursed. Perhaps he had been wrong all along, and this thing had led him to the centre of the swamp just to abandon him. The thought hadn’t finished forming before he stopped.

“Oh.”

He was back at the edge of the trees, right by the stream and the log. He could smell food cooking in town. Fai must have led him back in time without his realising where they were.

Suddenly he remembered the retainer. He had probably gone to their usual inn on his own after Kurogane didn’t show up. Kurogane cursed again and ran towards town, hoping his absence had merely been taken for a fling or a drunken wander. He touched the stone in his pocket to make sure it was still there, and made it to their room by dawn.

--

The retainer was dead when he arrived.

Kurogane had knocked on the door to their room with no response. He’d gone to the front desk to ask that it be unlocked, and when the door swung open he was certain by the silence and the ash in the fireplace that the room was unoccupied, at least by the man he knew.

The body was still in the bed when Kurogane stumbled over. He lifted a hand to the cold cheek - the vacant, ajar lips and the crescents of half-shut eyes were clammy under his touch.

“How did this happen?”

“We don’t know. He’s uninjured-”

“He’s dead.”

“But we saw him go to his room last night, as usual. He was well before that…”

The proprietors had Kurogane leave as soon as he could level himself enough to carry the body back to the wagon, one of them wiping her eye even as he lowered the shrouded figure onto the tray and set the horse in motion. A bag full of money from the night market swayed dolefully at his side. There was still dirt on the boards, but none of their produce remained.

“Kurogane?” His mother emerged from the front of the house as he rolled up to the front door. Understanding dawned on her instantly. She raised a hand to her mouth and lowered her gaze.

“I wasn’t there,” Kurogane said.

She shook her head. Kurogane unbridled the horse and carried the body inside with his mother beside him.

“He was dying,” she said. She was wiping her face. “He didn’t want to tell you. He had me promise I wouldn’t tell you before he was ready.”

“How long?”

She sighed. Her breath came ragged. “A month since he knew for sure. He saw a physician for the pains in his chest.”

Kurogane sat beside the body and hid his face in his hands. His mother rested a hand on his shoulder and stayed with him until the other households began to peek in, wondering why the beekeepers hadn’t woken up yet.

“I wasn’t there,” he groaned. His mother didn’t speak.

--

The final days of autumn passed in single file through the fields. Kurogane and his mother bought what food they could with the remaining money from their sales and managed to wrangle just enough for the two of them. The last pathetic potatoes Kurogane was able to dig up, they kept for themselves. It crossed his mind more than once that, had it still been the three of them, the trick would have failed.

He didn’t think of Fai, didn’t even look at the stone in his pocket again until winter had begun. He started to doubt the man’s appearance at all. Maybe there had been something in his drink. Maybe he had imagined it. The alternative was that Fai had been there, really been there, the second time someone Kurogane loved had died. Kurogane thought back on the strange, smirking man he’d followed through the swamp and pushed the thought from his mind.

He didn’t venture into the swamp again until the last leaf had fallen from the trees. The wall of the marsh looked more forbidding than ever. He looked down on it from the house, the tangle of naked branches and fog-simmering streams seeming a distant phantom. The beehives lined the side of the field where the ground hadn’t been churned up for vegetables, but the usual zipping of insects was absent today. All the bees were in hibernation. Kurogane imagined how they would spring back to life as soon as the seasons turned. The first sight of one of them crawling out from the wooden boxes always lifted his spirits.

Soon , he thought to himself as he tended the fire.

His mother lay reading in the room she had shared with his father. Daylight was dwindling and Kurogane was beginning to feel restless, his hand returning constantly to the stone in his pocket. His grief was still phantom-like in the way it lingered in certain doorways or over the retainer’s favourite smoking spot. They had just put away the spare cushion on the floor today, and Kurogane still veered around the spot where it used to be when he walked.

“Mother,” he said, leaning into her room. “I’m going for a walk. I’ll be home soon.”

She looked up from the book she was studying, brows knit. Her eyes showed all the understanding and concern he’d come to know her for. “Won’t you be cold?”

“I won’t be gone long,” he assured her.

She nodded and clambered up with a cough. “Take an extra coat with you,” she said. She opened the cupboard where she kept all her clothes and passed something to Kurogane. It was a jacket, overlarge for his mother’s slight frame and vaguely familiar.

“Is this father’s?”

She nodded. “I couldn’t bear to give it away.” She settled back into the mass of blankets where she’d been sitting, propped against the wall with a woollen throw over her shoulders. “And besides, it looks like it will come in handy.”

Kurogane gave her a small smile and wrapped the jacket around himself. With that, he left the house and headed for the swamp, the stone firm in his hand.

The field was peaty underfoot from a morning rain. The mound where the retainer was buried on the edge of the treeline was coarse with mud. Kurogane didn’t slow as he passed it, though he ran a hand over the wooden lattice that marked its place.

The Wisp was bobbing behind a ridge in the distance when he entered the swamp. It seemed more lethargic than before, but emerged bravely as he approached. Behind it, flitting into existence from behind some tree, was Fai.

“Hey,” Kurogane said. He made a point of meeting Fai’s eyes as he approached. Fai didn’t return his gaze for long, though. He looked almost afraid. Kurogane slowed as he neared the man, dreading to see him and the light he promised flee into the dark. He kept his ground in front of Fai.

“It’s been a while.”

Fai nodded. “It has.”

“I thought I’d come see you again.”

“To check if I was real?”

Kurogane sighed. He shuddered at the thought of being wrong about Fai. “Yes.”

Fai crossed his arms and turned away. He wandered around a tree stump and scraped it with his foot, apparently unsure of what to do. “I’m sorry,” he breathed.

“For what?”

Fai turned to face him. “I saw you standing at his grave. You stayed there almost all night after he died.”

Kurogane remembered it clearly. He hadn’t been able to move for hours after the burial. The thought that Fai had seen that made him want to avert his eyes, but he didn’t. He glared at the face of his companion behind the gathering swamp mist and scoffed.

“What, you think you did that?” Even as he said it, Kurogane felt his last suspicions about Fai fade. “You told me yourself. You’re drawn to death - you don’t cause it.” He was all the more assertive for the doubt flickering in Fai’s eyes.

“How can you be so easy to trust me?” Fai attempted a playful sneer. It faltered in a way that was almost painful to watch.

“You brought me home last time we met.”

“And? What if my being here does something else?”

Kurogane suppressed a shiver. “It won’t.”

“What about your mother? You might go home to-”

“Enough! How many things die in this swamp every day? How do you know you don’t just appear wherever another bee freezes to death? So what?”

Fai’s last quivering smile fell. “You have too much faith in me.”

Kurogane shook his head. “I have just enough faith in you,” he said. “Don’t ask why, but I do.”

Fai looked dejectedly away. He reached towards the Wisp, which edged around his fingertips like a familiar. “So why did you come back?”

Kurogane shrugged and started walking towards a nearby pond. He could tell Fai was following from the way the light moved over the trees, brightening around him and glinting off the water. He went to speak and shrugged again. “Felt like it.”

Fai said nothing. For a while, the Wisp was the only hint that he was there at all. Kurogane watched the water and the dark reflection of his own face on its surface. Then, in the golden ripples by his side, he saw Fai. A hand came to rest on his back, though when he looked to see Fai’s face, he found it turned away. He let Fai dip his forehead onto his shoulder and listened intently when the man finally spoke.

“Is it strange of me to do this?”

“No.” But Kurogane heard the hesitation in his own voice. “I’m just worried that if I turn around now, you won’t come back.”

Fai ‘hmm’ed and Kurogane felt the sound on his neck. He could feel the softness of Fai’s hair on his jaw, the warmth of his body at his back, and wondered again at how corporeal this man was, whether he was human in the way Kurogane understood or not. He reached back to lay his hand against Fai’s limp arm and curled his fingers around Fai’s wrist when the man made no move to pull away.

“I won’t leave you when you’re grieving.” Fai snickered as he said it. Kurogane couldn’t tell how genuine the sound was. “I wouldn’t be of much use then, would I?”

Kurogane’s hold on Fai’s wrist tightened. “That’s not what I meant by coming here. I would have come sooner, except…” he shrugged his free shoulder. “I couldn’t.”

“I’m surprised, though.”

“About what?”

Fai rested his chin on Kurogane’s shoulder and Kurogane heard him smile. “You don’t seem like someone who gets infatuated after a single meeting.”

Kurogane felt his face burn. “I’m not.” He looked at the light in the water and watched the ripples deepen as a breeze blew over them. Each glimmer appeared only for a moment before slipping away again. Twice, the Wisp’s light flickered out completely, and Kurogane had to check that Fai was still with him both times. But these moments were fleeting. “Some feelings just come more easily than others.”

Fai nodded. “They tend to be the ones that leave sooner, too. But like I said - if you really need me to be here, then I will stay for as long as you want.”

Kurogane stayed where he was until he wasn’t sure how many minutes had passed. In that time, Fai may as well have been sleeping as he stood, his arms wrapped around Kurogane’s middle and his breaths long and even. Snow had started falling at some point. Kurogane only registered it when it fell on the water in front of him. When he looked around, he realised it blanketed everything in ghostly white. He wasn’t sure he wanted this to be over anytime soon, but the cold reminded him eventually of the need to return home.

“My mother and I live together,” he said. He wondered whether there was even a need to say it - Fai probably knew. “I have to go back or she’ll be worried.”

He eased the man’s arms away and Fai complied, reluctantly. The Wisp, which had grown very still, lifted into twirls again as Fai detached himself.

“I’ll take you to the field.”

They walked almost side-by-side, this time; but as usual, Kurogane could inexplicably never quite match Fai’s pace, and always found himself watching the man’s back instead. The distance itself was what made him want to close it.

“Hey,” he said, before stepping through the entrance into the snow-covered field. “Do you still think you killed him?”

Fai looked at Kurogane’s eyes but didn’t answer.

“Because I don’t,” he asserted. He wished this would be enough to sate whatever hunger was burning in him. He wanted to see Fai content. He considered reaching out to him again or kissing him, or staying in the Wisp-lit caverns of the swamp with him for the rest of the night, wandering as they had done last time...

“Bye,” he said at length, and turned towards his house.

“Wait.”

Fai grabbed his arm. Kurogane again had the distinct impression that his hand wasn’t as unbreachable as it should have been.

“What is it?”

Fai lingered behind him for a moment. “Promise you’ll come back for me one more time? I have something I want to tell you.” He sighed. “Rather, that I should tell you.”

Kurogane clasped the stone in his hand, pulse quickening. He nodded. “I’ll come back.”

Fai let his grip loosen, slowly. Kurogane felt every lasting point of contact as his hands and then his fingertips slipped away, and then suddenly it was dark. He blinked, breathing heavily for a second as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. He spun around to find that Fai was no longer behind him. What he saw instead made his heart race.

There was no snow. No icy glimmer clung to the branches and no blanket of white covered the ground. It was all streams and rotting leaf litter.

Kurogane hurried home. He stoked the fire and lit candles in his room as soon as he was in the door, and then stopped, something occurring to him. Slowly, he peeked into his mother’s room. She was asleep, her body rising and falling with each slow breath, and Kurogane sighed. He shut his eyes on the scene and left for his own room, easing himself back to calm. Everything was okay. He had only to sleep. He went to bed with the murmurs of the night close as a quilt around him.

--

The last time Kurogane saw the Wisp was at the end of winter.

He’d been putting it off. He had the impression that Fai would not keep returning at his behest like this, for all the affection he felt from him. This would not last, but Kurogane did not feel it was time for it to end.

He couldn’t stay out all night at this time of year, in any case. Whatever Fai wanted to tell him, he didn’t think it would be as simple as an hour of chatting, and kept himself busy instead with the myriad tasks of repairing old coats and cutting wood that the season demanded. He and his mother would drink steaming tea, and then hot water when they ran low on tea just for the warmth, and read aloud books or write down their thoughts during the night. In the day, Kurogane earned extra food by cutting firewood for older neighbours. He was occasionally able to offer his skills in town, too.

He thought as much as ever about the retainer and about Fai, but only ever worried whether the latter was willing to wait a while longer, since the former had all the time in the world.

The last snows were upon them when Kurogane sat on the deck one day, a warm cup between his hands, looking out over the swamp. He sat there all afternoon and watched twilight descend with the silence of an owl, knowing. It was time to visit Fai once again.

“Mother,” he said with a small cough. He always felt awkward lying - to his mother most of all. “I’ll be away tonight. I’m going into town. Is there anything you need?”

“No,” she said from the far end of the deck, where she was whittling away at a charm in the shape of a bee. She looked up with a smile warmer than Kurogane had seen on her in months. “But send a message back if you’re going to be away any longer, in case I change my mind.”

He waited until she had gone back inside before slipping off the deck and heading to the road, where he made a broad turn back into the swamp. He waited on its edge as the night deepened and the darkness thickened, turning the stone between his fingers. At last, after a half-hour had passed, he caught sight of the Wisp.

Fai was with it, hanging back as usual. Kurogane walked towards them with care not to step into any dips or trip into the water. He was in front of them by the time Fai spoke.

“You took your time.”

Kurogane bowed his head. “I didn’t think it was right to come after you straight away.”

He felt a hand on his cheek. Fai lifted his face and looked at him, calm and unsmiling. “I don’t think it would have been wise. Where we’re going is very cold. The warmer the season, the better.”

Kurogane looked back at him. “You don’t look thrilled.”

Fai chuckled. “To be honest, I’ve been putting it off myself.” He let his hand fall and clasped Kurogane’s hand. Kurogane gripped back to let Fai know he was ready. The Wisp flitted ahead and, pulling Kurogane forward, Fai began to lead them into the swamp.

Kurogane didn’t ask where they were going. Instead, he tried as usual to keep pace with Fai, and managed to walk close enough to see his face this time. His appearance didn’t seem to have changed at all since their first meeting. His half-bound hair was the same length, he hadn’t lost or gained weight, and his hands were the same long, battered tools that had lifted Kurogane over the ridge of the stream the first night.

“Is this going to be the last time I see you?”

“Most likely.”

Kurogane nodded, lips pressed together. “And what did you have to tell me?”

Fai was quiet for a long time. When he finally started his story, Kurogane felt it burdened by a sense of duty. “To start with,” Fai said, “I was not born alone. My twin died when we were children.”

Kurogane looked around. He saw snow piling up on the ground around them, blotting the murky colours of the soil. A trickle of sunlight ran through the night and illuminated for a second the shape of a young boy before disappearing.

“We were out playing in the snow one day when he fell into a stream.” Kurogane heard the splash and turned to look, but only caught sight of a ream of cloth sliding through the water before they turned beyond a cluster of rocks, and the vision was gone. “He didn’t drown - he came to the edge and I managed to pull him out.” Fai’s voice softened as he spoke. “But his clothes were all wet and we were far from home. We tried walking, but he was heavy and cold. We took off his jacket and I dragged it behind me, and he wore mine instead, but it wasn’t enough. Soon it was night and everything was dark, and we felt like sleeping. But we kept going.”

Fai continued to lead Kurogane down the long path of snow, following two pairs of small footsteps and the tracks left behind by the jacket. Kurogane hadn’t noticed their appearance and couldn’t see where they led.

“At some point we became lost. We must have gone on searching for home for hours by the time he collapsed. I tried to get him to stand up but he just kept falling. And then I tried to carry him, but I was a child - I was too weak. And by now, I was freezing, too.

“My teeth were chattering and I couldn’t feel my hands or feet, and I remember thinking how bad it must have been for him if I already felt like this. Because I knew if I stayed there, I was going to die. He must have been so much closer…”

Fai’s eyes were hard. Kurogane could see him holding back tears and squeezed his hand.

“It was around then that I saw a light. I decided to follow it.”

Kurogane’s eyes widened. He looked at the Wisp where it hovered, indifferent. “As we walked after it, I realised we were getting close to home. It was taking us back. We could make it.” Fai gritted his teeth. “But eventually he couldn’t even stand up.”

Kurogane listened to the scrunch of snow beneath their feet and the defiant coursing of the streams around them. The chill was starting to seep into his clothes even here. “So you left him behind?” His voice was not accusing.

Fai didn’t answer at first. He ran a thumb over Kurogane’s hand and let out a long, trembling breath. “I went to get our caretaker and show him where my brother was,” Fai said. “But he was already frozen when we came back.”

They reached a small clearing in the swamp. Here, moonlight breathed luminescence into the snow, which still drifted from somewhere above. All around, a great bowing circle of trees encased the area. The Wisp cast its little glow on a fallen tree in the middle of the space. Twists of blackened flowers still clung to the trunk and poked through the snow like extinguished matchsticks.

Fai took a seat on the trunk and drew Kurogane down beside him. They huddled against the cold and Kurogane waited for Fai to continue.

“I looked everywhere for some way of bringing him back,” he said. Kurogane was unable to suppress a sigh. “Doesn’t sound good, does it?”

Kurogane wrapped an arm around Fai. The man leaned into him and he recalled the way Fai had stood at his back like a pillar for him before. He felt compelled to try to match that strength now. “What did you do?”

“I spent all my time in the swamp, studying magic. I knew a little - I could make charms and that sort of thing. Nothing that would have saved us.” He sighed. “But as I got older, I realised I needed more time. I was always just on the edge of running out of time.”

Kurogane felt his brows come together. He pulled Fai closer, urging him on, but felt himself tense even so.

“There’s a spell,” Fai said. “You can extend your lifespan with it.”

Kurogane frowned. He watched the Wisp flicker over a nearby branch. It was unusually still. “What spell?”

Fai’s free hand clenched and unclenched in his lap. Kurogane watched it with narrowed eyes as Fai spoke. “This is the bad part. You’re not going to like me for this.”

Kurogane’s heart sped up. “What?”

“You have to take life from another for it to work. You have to take someone else’s lifespan and add it to your own - wait!” his hand flew out and gripped Kurogane by the sleeve as he stood up. “Please wait. I never took from a human.”

“What about my friend?” Kurogane said. He hadn’t meant to raise his voice - had only felt the red hot shock shoot through his limbs as he stood. He looked at Fai, the long hair spilling half-unbound from his braid, the eyes imploring and desperate, and shuddered. He didn’t want this… He had never looked at Fai and seen a monster.

“I think you were right. I don’t think I hurt him,” Fai said. “I can’t blame you if you hate me for this. I wouldn’t believe me either.”

Kurogane scoffed. “Few would.”

Fai’s hand loosened. His old smile returned as placid as ever on his face. Slowly, his hand began to fall-

“Stop it,” Kurogane said. He took Fai’s hand again and watched with satisfaction as Fai returned a surprised gaze. “I’m an idiot and I believe you.” He sat down and cursed. “Just… convince me. Please.”

Fai looked bewildered.

“What?” Kurogane demanded.

“I haven’t planned this part.”

Kurogane let out a sound that was half sigh, half growl, and threw his arm around Fai again. “I didn’t plan on trusting you, either,” he said. “So fill me in while I believe you. Please.”

“Well, I used to trawl the forest for creatures I could take. Some days I was strong enough to take a bear.” Kurogane heard a great echoing cry in the distance and kept his hold on his companion. “Some days I couldn’t bring myself to do anything but kill bees.”

Kurogane bowed his head but said nothing.

“I’m drawn to death because, for me, it was a way to keep living,” Fai murmured. ”I was scared when I found out your friend died. I wondered if maybe my old habits had just - come back when I didn’t intend for them to. I wondered whether my old spell had hit a new target. But I haven’t used it in so long I almost forget how to do it.”

Kurogane frowned. “How long has it been?”

Fai tilted his head to consider. He grew very quiet. “Fifteen years.” He smirked. “And I can assure you, I didn’t have enough lifespans of boars and deer left inside of me to keep me looking this young, by that point.”

Kurogane gaped. “Then what? How are you…”

“Alive?” Fai sighed. He took Kurogane’s hand in his own again - it was perfectly warm. Fai shut his eyes and leaned into Kurogane’s side. He could feel Fai breathing, could feel the pulse in his neck when he touched it. He didn’t know if he wanted to hear any more. The worst was filling his mind, and he was suddenly afraid that when he opened his eyes, Fai would be rigid like wood, like stone, gone.

“Do you still want to know what this is?” Fai laid a hand on Kurogane’s pocket. Inside, the piece of fluorite rolled like a worried heart.

Kurogane nodded. “Tell me, then.”

Fai met Kurogane’s eyes like he was bracing himself. “The last life I tried to steal was from the Will o’ the Wisp.”

Fai pointed at the creature that fluttered above them both. It dipped slowly, sorrowfully at the sound of its name. He smiled. “I knew it was my last chance, but I never managed to catch it. If I was good at running away from death, then it was a hundred times better.

“This thing must have been full of life, I thought. It must have been immortal if it could dodge even me like that. You know the stories about them?”

“Not well,” Kurogane said. He swallowed, eyeing the creature with renewed awe. “They can lead you home when you’re lost.”

“Or they will lead you to death.” Fai laughed trillingly. “I guess I exhausted my luck, repaying it by trying to kill it.”

The Wisp bowed beside him. Kurogane felt his stomach turn. He realised he was afraid. If this was a momentous point in his life, he wanted to be alive to appreciate it later. Try as he might, Kurogane couldn’t imagine the little light killing anybody.

“How did it happen?” he tried.

Fai smiled. “It fought back - devoured me - and suddenly I was gone. Effortless,” he said. His voice was almost admiring. He held a hand out to the Wisp, and to Kurogane’s shock, it landed in his palm.

“You were gone?”

“Everything was.” He leaned over and touched Kurogane’s pocket again. “Except for this. The Wisp finished me off, but it left behind the all power I’d collected - mine and the beasts’ - in this little crystal.”

Kurogane failed to comprehend for a moment. “Hadn’t you… used it?”

“Used the life I stole, certainly,” said Fai. “But having all those beasts inside you leaves its mark. Whenever I stole a life, it came with the spirit, too.” Kurogane looked up again, and saw a man on the edge of the clearing. He didn’t even recognise him as Fai at first, naked and contorted as he was, and tearing into something that turned at his feet… “I had all the wildness and focus of my prey. By the time I hunted down the Wisp, I was barely in control of myself.” The illusion evaporated with his words.

Kurogane hung his head in his hands. “If all this is true, then you’re not really alive, are you?”

Fai pressed his cheek to Kurogane’s head. “I’m here,” he offered. “I know I am. I’m aware of myself, which is more than I could have said then. I can feel you next to me.”

“But you can’t stay.”

“No,” Fai confirmed. “I don’t think so.”

He held the glimmering Wisp between them. Its light spun sheer and faint on their clasped hands. “I’m here because we made a deal. The Wisp would project me as I once was into this world on the condition that I restore the powers of the beasts into their rightful places. The spirits stuck in this crystal shouldn’t be in one place like this, unable to move or to maintain their mountains.” Fai gestured to the splendour of the trees around them - Kurogane followed with his eyes, unable to look away as he pictured it before .

“You want to fix all this?” he said to the Wisp.

“It does. Which is probably why it got rid of me,” said Fai. “But we must act quickly. You see,” he whispered, and held out the creature to show Kurogane. Kurogane saw it flicker as he had seen it do before, and underneath it a grisly, mottled thing perched like an insect in Fai’s hand. “The Wisp is dying, too.”

Kurogane closed his eyes. He knew he had found the answer to his mother’s and his plight - to the hungers of the whole town. He could restore purpose for himself with the mountains alive and the bees plentiful again. But he hated the thought that his time with this strange person would be so short.

“I would have loved you,” Fai said. “But as usual, I let myself run out of time.”

The Wisp flickered again and Kurogane reflexively pulled Fai closer. He grazed a kiss on his companion’s cheek, letting his lips linger on the other’s as he tried to think of some solace to whisper.

“Time is good at running,” was all he could manage.

Fai chuckled in his arms and Kurogane returned another kiss. He could feel Fai’s breath on his skin and was startled to find that it was cold.

“Take this back,” Fai said, and the words felt like a breeze on Kurogane’s skin. “With my apologies.”

Kurogane nodded. He lifted Fai’s hand to his lips and kissed the fingertips, the wrists, drew the arm close between them and held him in a warm embrace.

“I’m sorry.”

Kurogane shook his head even as he felt Fai’s hands slip from his grasp like water. “You’re forgiven.”

He could feel Fai clinging to the front of his clothes as he arched upwards to claim a final kiss. Kurogane gave it to him willingly, and when it ended, he was alone with the Wisp. Fai was gone.

He sat on the log with the weight in his pocket the only reminder of the disappeared man. The snow had vanished, too, as though it had absorbed cleanly into the atmosphere.

Kurogane wiped his eyes. He stared at nothing for a moment. The swamp hummed and echoed on all sides, back to the way it had been on the night of the funeral - but with fewer secrets, and with the seasons turning in the other direction. He held out a hand. “Come on, then.” He was facing the Wisp.

It still didn’t seem convinced that it could come too close, after all those years. It circled his hand feebly while he waited. “I took your stone,” he said, “Now you take me home.”

Slowly, the Wisp descended his palm. He could feel its legs sharp and brittle on his skin, barbs or shell plucking at his hand when he curled it around the creature, and decided once and for all that it was exactly what he had thought it was when he was a child. An oversized, magical firefly. He snorted despite himself.

He stood and went back the way he came, leaving the clearing and holding the the Wisp out to the cluster of the swamp to guide him. He felt it tugging him in the right direction by fluttering against his fingers, and followed the way it pointed out for him until the scenery began to make sense, and the streams looked like they would converge at the one spot he was familiar with, where Fai had stood at his back like a sentinel one season before. Once or twice the light dulled - sometimes for a whole heartbeat - and then it would return, dimly, to finish its task.

At last he arrived at the edge of the swamp. He could see his house. Candlelight marked the corner where his mother must have been reading, and he felt something lift out of him like a sigh. He touched the retainer’s grave reflexively as he passed.

“Dammit.” He was glad it was too dark and lonely for anyone to see him as he curled a hand around the stone and lifted it to his heart. Except for one creature. He lifted the Wisp to his face.

“I forgot to thank you,” he said. The Wisp did not respond. “For bringing him and his rock.”

The Wisp, as usual, did not respond. He felt its legs fold onto its body as the last of its strength diminished and it rolled onto its side. He carried it with him to the house; it still diffused the darkness just enough to illuminate his face when his mother saw him.

“Kurogane!” she said. She went to him and lifted a hand to the Wisp, just shy of touching it. Her expression was one of bewilderment like Kurogane had never seen on her.

“It brought me home. It’s done that a few times,” he told her. “And it gave me this.”

He showed her the piece of fluorite. She held it up to the light of the Wisp and ran a hand over it, mouth open and brows taut. “This is real,” she said. “Whatever is in this…”

“Sit down, then,” he said, and pulled the cushions in front of the fireplace. He sat with the Wisp and his mother sat opposite with the stone, utterly attentive. “I’ll tell you the story.”

Outside, the swamp was dark, and the moon floated with impossible mass in the ink of the night.