“Would that I could escort you there, Baku-sama. But anyone who approaches the King’s domain now suffers terrible consequences, human and demon alike. He has fortified his residence since the Flight. All I can do is offer directions. First you must find the winding path that curves eastward, not westward, through the woods with many names and no names at all. Then you must turn south-wise four times, light incense — I assume you have nothing else for protection — then let the smoke demons guide you through the Rock Treasury Mountain. It is the long route, but the safest.”

The Yokai groans. “I can’t follow all that! I barely know where I am now. There must be a way to — hang on. Do you smell that? Smells yummy.”

The Konaki Jiji looks over its shoulder. “A nightmare. Get down. Down!”

About to inform the creature she cannot kneel down any farther, the Yokai gasps as she feels the sharpest of tugs on her arm. The Konaki Jiji pins her to the earth, shushing in her ear. “’Tis the blood-drinker,” he whispers.

There is something moving in the dark. A light, bouncing along in the darkness twenty feet away. It bobs one way, then the other, as if dangling from a wire, coming ever closer. A humanoid figure follows it. A girl. A tall, long-haired girl, thin as a rake, dressed in a schoolgirl’s uniform.

“What does he want?” says the girl.

“To talk to you, Hino-chan! He’s been worried.”

“Then he should not tarry any longer. He should take the man’s eyes and be done with it.”

The light and the girl figure pass close to the ditch, illuminating the Yokai’s bare legs by mere inches, then turn and continue down the path. They do not speak again. The Konaki Jiji and the Yokai hold their breath until the light fades away.

“Forget the directions; follow the nightmare,” the Konaki Jiji whispers. “Follow the nightmare and the blood-drinker to the King. But beware, Baku-sama. Do not let the nightmares spot you, or they will devour you, too. I could not bear that happen.”

With a kiss farewell on the Konaki Jiji’s tiny hand, the Yokai rises to her feet. Like a leopard, she springs from her feet and scrambles up the nearest tree. She runs and leaps across the treetop branches over the path, keeping the girl and the bobbing light in her sights. At some point she loses them around a bend but looks up and sees the house just ahead. She continues toward it, confident in her noiseless feet carrying her above the path, confident that she will not be spotted. “I can do this … I am invisible. I am invisible.”