The Girl and the Lantern

About this story

In a mountain village where the nights come early, a girl named Hana takes her grandmother's paper lantern and goes out for water. The well is past the forest. The snow falls soft as feathers, and at first she feels brave. Then the trees grow taller, the light turns thin and blue, and the little flame will not reach past her own two hands. Something pale rises between the cedars, sighing that it knows a warm and easy way. A white crane comes down through the falling snow and will not let her pass. What the crane shows her next is a small strange thing about her lantern, and about where a light is supposed to fall.

Read the beginning

In the mountain village of Yuki, where the nights came early and stayed long, there lived a girl named Hana. She was not the tallest girl, or the bravest. But she wondered about everything, and she was never afraid of the dark in her own small room.

High on the tallest pine, above the steep snowy roofs, a raven sat black and glossy as wet ink. It turned its head and watched her, the way you watch someone you have been waiting for.

One winter evening the snow came down soft and grey, and Hana's grandmother grew too tired to walk. "The water jar is empty," she said. "The well is far, and the dark is deep. Take the old paper lantern, little one, and go carefully."

Hana lifted the lantern. It was made of bamboo and thin white paper, with one small flame inside. She held it close to her face, but the light did not seem like much. It barely reached her own two hands.

"Stay where the windows can find you," her grandmother said. But the well was past the forest, and Hana's heart beat fast. So she wrapped her scarf, and she stepped onto the path, and the forest swallowed the village behind her.

The snow was beautiful at first. It fell like quiet feathers. It sat on the cedar branches in soft white sleeves. Hana breathed out little clouds and watched them disappear, and she felt brave, and she walked on.

But the deeper she went, the taller the trees grew, and the quieter the world became. The light turned thin and blue between the trunks. And Hana felt, for the first time, that the forest was watching her back.

The dark pressed close. She held the lantern higher, but the little flame stayed small and stubborn. She could not see the well. She could not see the trees. She could not even see her own cold feet.

Then the snow ahead began to shimmer, and a shape rose up between the cedars. It was pale and thin as smoke, with a long sad face and eyes like two empty wells. "Poor cold girl," it sighed, in a voice like wind under a door. "You are lost. Follow me. I know a warm and easy way."

The spirit's path glowed soft and golden, downhill, away from the dark trees. It looked warm. It looked near. Hana wanted, so badly, to believe it. She lifted one foot to follow.

Then she heard wings. A crane came down through the falling snow, white as the moon, tall as Hana herself. It landed softly between the girl and the shimmering shape, and spread its great white wings, and would not let her pass.

The pale spirit hissed and curled and thinned to nothing, like breath on cold glass. "That one only takes," the crane seemed to say, with a slow turn of its long neck. "It promises the easy way, and leaves you alone in the snow." And the false golden path went dark.

But now the well felt farther than ever. The night was black and without stars, and Hana was cold and small and so far from the lamp in her grandmother's window. She thought of that warm face, and her eyes filled, and a tear froze on her cheek. "My little light is no good," she whispered. "It cannot even find my feet."

The story goes on in the video.