Seven days the fog had swallowed Sora's village whole, and nobody could say why. This is the kind of bedtime story grandmothers in Korea have told for a thousand years — one with teeth in it, where the bravest person is also the most afraid.

The fog smelled of wet stone and old pine needles. It sat on rooftops like a gray blanket. It crept under doors and made the rice taste strange. At night, there was no moon, no stars — just thick gray nothing. And up on Gyeryongsan, the great mountain above the village, the dokkaebi's fire had gone dark for the first time anyone could remember.

Her grandmother, Halmoni, was the one who noticed.

"The old spirit's lantern is out," Halmoni said, warming her papery hands over their small stove. She smelled of pine smoke and barley tea. "Without his fire, the mountain breathes cold. The fog will stay forever."

Sora felt her stomach tighten. "Then someone has to relight it."

Halmoni looked at her sideways. "That someone would have to climb the mountain alone. At night. And sit with a dokkaebi." She paused. "He is not kind, that one. He is very old, and very lonely, and he has forgotten how to be anything else."

Sora thought about her little brother coughing in the next room. She thought about the farmers who couldn't see their own hands in the fields. She thought about the rice that tasted like nothing at all.

"Tell me the way," she said.

—

The mountain path was black and slippery. The pine trees groaned above her like they were trying to warn her, their branches brushing cold fingers across her face. Sora carried a small lamp and a bundle of food — sweet rice cakes her grandmother had wrapped in cloth that smelled of sesame and home.

Halfway up, she froze.

Something enormous and white was standing in the path.

A tiger. Not a regular tiger — this one was ancient and calm, with eyes the color of amber in firelight. For a moment Sora couldn't breathe. Her lamp hand shook so hard the flame nearly went out.

But the tiger just looked at her. Then it turned and walked slowly up the path.

And somehow, without quite deciding to, Sora followed.

—

The tiger led her to a wide flat rock near the summit, where a gnarled, knotted figure sat hunched over a pile of cold gray ash. He was small, with skin like tree bark, a tangled beard, and a heavy club resting across his knees. The dokkaebi. He did not look up.

"Go away," he said. His voice sounded like gravel sliding down a hill. "Humans always want something."

Sora took a deep breath. "I brought food," she said. "Not to bargain. Just — you look cold."

He raised his head. His eyes were huge and orange, like two burning embers, and they watched her with something between suspicion and hunger.

"Why?" he said.

"Because it's cold up here," Sora said, "and you're sitting alone in the dark."

A long silence. The wind moved through the pines. Sora set the rice cakes on the rock beside him and sat down across the cold ash heap.

The dokkaebi stared at the rice cakes for so long she thought he'd forgotten what food was. Then, slowly, he picked one up. He took a bite. His enormous orange eyes went soft.

"Sweet," he said. Very quietly. Like he hadn't expected it.

"My grandmother made them," Sora said. "She wanted me to say hello. She says you've been on this mountain since before her grandmother's grandmother was born."

Something moved across the dokkaebi's face. Not quite a smile. Something older than a smile.

"I have been here a very long time," he said. "And no one has said hello in… many, many years."

"That sounds lonely," Sora said.

He looked at her sharply, like she'd said something dangerous. Then his big shoulders dropped, just a little.

"It is."

They sat together in the dark for a while. The cold pressed through Sora's coat, sharp and real. Above them, the stars were still buried in fog. She thought carefully — very carefully — about how to ask.

"The village misses your light," she finally said. "Not just because of the fog. Because when we could see your fire up here at night, we knew we weren't alone either."

For a long time the dokkaebi said nothing. His orange eyes glimmered.

Then he reached into the cold ash with one gnarled hand. He closed his fist. And when he opened it, a small bright flame bloomed on his palm — the color of sunrise, the color of tiger eyes, the color of something very old remembering what it was for.

It spread. Up through the ash, up into a great pillar of warm gold light that pushed the fog apart like a hand parting curtains.

Above them — and this is the part that children ages 6-12 might find hard to explain later but very easy to *feel* — the stars came out. Not one or two. All of them. More than Sora had ever seen, scattered across the dark like white seeds tossed by a generous hand.

"You should come down to the village sometime," Sora said. "Halmoni makes barley tea."

The dokkaebi looked at her for a long, long moment. Then he said, very quietly, "Maybe I will."

—

On her way down the mountain, the tiger walked beside her. Its fur smelled of pine and snow. Sora reached out once and touched it — just barely, her fingers brushing white warmth — and the tiger did not flinch.

She didn't know, then, that she had done three things at once.

She just knew the fog was lifting, and the mountain was warm again, and somewhere behind her, a very old and very lonely spirit was eating a sweet rice cake and watching his fire burn gold against the dark.