Yuna, a young frog attendant, nearly fainted. But the boy didn’t vanish. He didn’t turn into a pig. He just stood there, dripping saltwater from a sea no longer in existence.
Kai looked at his own empty paper lantern. “Then I’ll give it something better than light.”
“You can stay,” she said. “Or you can go. But you’ll remember the way back now.”
No one remembered what for. The older soot sprites whispered it was for a creature that had stopped coming. Kamaji, who now needed two pairs of glasses to thread his herb pouches, said nothing at all.