(A lost explorer)
The first thing the explorer lost was the trail.
The second thing was the map.
The third thing, inconveniently, was the certainty that there had ever been a trail in the first place.
He stood on the edge of a ravine that hadn’t been there ten minutes ago, boots grinding in pale dust that looked suspiciously like powdered marble. A moment ago there had been pine needles underfoot and the comfortable loam of a forest floor. Now the trees ended in a sharp line behind him, and ahead yawned a canyon of broken columns and carved stone, as if some ancient temple had been dropped from the sky and shattered on impact.
“Okay,” he muttered. “That’s… new.”
The explorer’s name—at least the one he used these days—was Rowan Cairn. “Rowan” fit on travel documents and didn’t make bureaucrats nervous. “Cairn” was a private joke; a pile of stones to mark where someone had been, or where someone had vanished.
Rowan tightened the strap of his pack and checked his pockets for the seventeenth time. Compass. Multi-tool. Crumpled transit card from a city that no longer existed on any map. Phone with no signal, as usual in this place. No physical map, of course. Because the path had been “so obvious” at the start.
He turned In a slow circle.
Behind: a dense evergreen forest under a sky of bruised violet cloud, the air smelling of resin and cold. Ahead: a ruin-filled ravine that glowed faintly from within its fractures, as if the stone remembered fire. To the left, the forest broke and became city—tower blocks and alleyways jutting out at impossible angles, their windows lit with the warm gold of distant apartments. To the right, the trees thinned into steel ribs and gantries, the skeletal framework of a starship cradle under construction, cranes frozen mid-swing.
It was alwayss like this here: borders soft as breath. Places rubbing up against each other like pages not quite aligned.
“Right,” Rowan said. “You’re definitely lost.”
His voice came out too loud in the strange quiet. No birdsong. No hum of traffic. Just the faint, glassy sound of the wind threading through broken pillars and antenna masts.
He checked his phone anyway. No bars. The lock screen still displayed the last normal thing he remembered: a weather app promising “light showers” for a city that had slipped behind him hours—or days?—ago.
The sky overhead wavered. For a heartbeat, the clouds were not clouds but carved ceiling panels painted with constellations; then they blinked back to stormy violet. A fine drizzle began, cold as disappointment.
Rowan dragged in a breath, tasting rain and dust and a metallic tang like old coins.
“I should’ve stayed with the survey team,” he said to no one. “Filled out expense reports. Complained about coffee. Died of boredom at forty-five.”
The memory of the argument rose unbidden: the project lead saying Your job is to map new transit corridors, not wander into anomalies, and Rowan saying My job is to see where things could go.
The anomaly had obliged by opening under his feet.
He looked again at the ravine. There was a way down, technically—broken steps carved into fallen blocks, narrow ledges between splintered columns. It screamed “ancient curse” in every language.
“Yeah, that’s a no,” Rowan said. “Forest it is.”
He turned his back on the ravine and stepped toward the trees.
On the second step the forest pulled away like a curtain.
Rowan stumbled forward onto cobblestones. Streetlamps arched overhead, their bulbs glowing with a soft amber that was not electricity. The air smelled of wet stone and frying food, and somewhere a radio played a song he almost remembered.
He froze.
Behind him, the ravine. In front of him, a narrow street between tall, crooked houses of brick and timber. To the side, in the gap between a doorway and a drainpipe, something moved.
Light flickered there—not quite flame, not quite glass. It drew itself into the shape of a fox.
Rowan stared. The fox stared back with eyes like two tiny lanterns, steady and warm.
Its body was a delicate tangle of light and shadow, its fur made of glowing threads as if someone had woven fireflies into the outline of an animal. Along its sides and tail, small panes of something like paper or glass shifted and clicked, each one etched with symbols that refused to resolve into any script Rowan recognized. The fox’s paws touched the ground without disturbing the damp, leaving no prints.
“…Right,” Rowan said slowly. “This is new, even for you, Rowan.”
The fox inclined its head, as if acknowledging the observation.
“You’re not real,” he muttered. “I hit my head on the way down. Or up. Or sideways. Or—”
The fox stepped fully out of the shadows, and its light pushed the drizzle back. Where the glow reached, the raindrops turned into tiny floating lanterns for an instant, drifting downward like seeds before winking out.
Rowan swallowed.
“Okay. Counterpoint: maybe you’re very real.”
The fox blinked. One of its side-panels—no, not a panel, more like a hanging charm made of thin horn and translucent paper—flipped over with a soft click. On its surface, lines rearranged themselves until they made an image Rowan could read.
It was a little drawing of a person standing at a crossroads, arms spread in helpless confusion.
Rowan stared at the dangling charm. Then at himself. Then at the fox.
“Rude,” he said. “Accurate, but rude.”
The fox’s tail swished, scattering sparks of pale gold. Without further ceremony, it turned and trotted down the narrow street, lantern-light paws splashing through puddles that did not ripple.
“Hey!” Rowan called. “Where do you think you’re—”
The fox paused and glanced back.
The warmth in its small bright eyes held no impatience, only a quiet expectation. It felt uncomfortably like the look his grandmother used to give him when he was young and staging ten separate rebellions at once: Have you finished being dramatic, or shall I put the kettle on first?
“You’re a hallucination with attitude,” Rowan decided. “Fine. Lead on, ghost-lantern-fox-thing. I’m out of better ideas.”
He followed.
The street bent like a question mark, and with each curve the world changed. A few steps took him past a café whose sign was written in a language of dots and dashes of light; a few more, and he was walking beside a high hedge in which birds made of folded paper hopped and sang in soft rustles. The fox padded ahead, the glow from its body painting the stones in warm amber.
“Any chance you know where ‘home’ is?” Rowan asked.
The fox’s ear twitched. Another charm at its side flipped. This one showed a circle with a dot off-center, an arrow pointing away from the dot.
“That’s not helpful,” Rowan grumbled. “You don’t even know what I mean by home, do you?”
The fox did not reply. Of course it did not reply. Rowan kept talking anyway, because silence gave his thoughts too much room.
“I mean, I had a home. Once. Just… kept moving. New cities. New contracts. New transit lines to chart. Figured if I mapped enough roads, eventually I’d find the one that felt like it was mine.”
He sidestepped a puddle that reflected not the sky above, but a vaulted ceiling of stained glass. Colors rippled over his boots.
“Or maybe I thought if I never stopped, I wouldn’t have to admit I was lost. Joke’s on me, I guess.”
The fox slowed. The street opened into a wide square that belonged to no single time.
On one side stood a subway entrance, its railings slick with rain, escalators frozen halfway up. On the opposite side rose the jagged bones of a starship hull under assembly, cranes locked mid-swing. Between them, a ring of standing stones shouldered up through the cobbles, each one carved with symbols worn almost smooth.
In the center of the square, the ground dropped away into darkness—a perfectly circular pit, too round to be natural, too deep to see the bottom.
The fox sat at the edge of it, lantern-eyes reflecting the void.
Rowan stopped well back.
“Nope,” he said. “Not a chance. I’ve played this game. That’s a bottomless metaphor pit if I’ve ever seen one.”
Another charm on the fox’s side flipped. This time the drawing showed a tiny figure standing at the lip of a dark circle, a hesitant foot extended over the edge. Beside it, another little figure walked calmly around the circle instead, following a faint, dotted line.
The fox tilted Its head toward the second figure, then looked up at Rowan.
“So there’s a way around,” he said slowly. “And I get to choose whether to jump or take the long path.”
The fox’s tail made a small approving flick. Sparks drifted off and circled the pit, sketching a faint bridge of light that arched from one side to the other before fading.
Rowan exhaled, tension he hadn’t realized he was carrying loosening from his shoulders.
“My entire life in three pictures from a walking lantern,” he muttered. “Great.”
He circled the pit, giving it a wide berth. The fox padded along the rim, staying just ahead, never pushing, never falling behind. Just… there.
After a while, Rowan said, quieter, “I walked away from a lot of things. Jobs. Cities. People. Every time the road forked, I picked the direction that kept me moving. I told myself that was bravery.”
A charm turned, revealing a simple symbol: a heart with a tiny door drawn in its center, closed, laced with a comically large padlock.
Rowan winced. “Okay, now you’re just being mean.”
The fox gave what might have been a tiny snort. Its light brightened for a heartbeat, then softened again.
They reached the far side of the square. The pit ended; the cobblestones became compressed dirt, then gravel. Ahead, rows of metal rails spread like fingers, leading into a mist where station platforms, ship berths, and forest paths all seemed to knot together.
It looked like a place between departures.
The fox halted.
“Is this it?” Rowan asked.
Several charms flipped at once, clicking like distant windchimes.
On one: a train, stylized and simple, its windows glowing.
On another: a path vanishing between trees.
On a third: a narrow alley with hanging lights and something that might’ve been a wooden sign in the shape of a tankard.
The fourth charm was blank.
Rowan frowned. “You’re saying…?”
The fox shook itself, and all the charms settled. Then one, and only one—the blank one—slowly inked over with fresh lines. They curled and curved, resolving into something like a doorway outlined in light, standing alone in empty space.
Not a command. An invitation.
Rowan’s throat tightened.
“No more maps,” he said softly. “No more someone else’s routes. You’re not here to show me where to go. Just that… there is a way. That I can pick it.”
The fox’s eyes warmed like coals in a hearth. Its head dipped once, solemn as a bow.
Rowan looked out over the rails and paths.
On the tracks to the left, a sleek train waited, doors open. Through its windows, he saw a city of neon and wet asphalt, the kind of place where you could disappear into crowds and late-night diners and never be asked where you’d come from.
Down the forest path, he glimpsed cabins and lanterns, the glow of fires, and the sound—faint but real—of laughter and clinking cups. The air from that direction smelled of pine and roasting meat.
The alley with the hanging lights promised cramped tables, handwritten notes pinned to walls, old stories told over new drinks. The wooden sign in the shape of a tankard swung gently, though no wind moved.
Something in his chest twisted toward that alley, quick and fierce. A place of pause. A place between.
His hand went to his chest, as if to physically steady the sudden ache.
“How far ahead are you playing this game?” he asked the fox.
The lantern-fox did not answer. Instead, it stepped close enough that its light touched Rowan’s boots and jacket, warm and steady. Up close, he saw that the “fur” was not fur at all, but hundreds of tiny lanterns, some lit, some dark, each containing a fragment of image: doorways, bridges, faces, cups, keys.
Not futures, exactly. Possibilities.
“I don’t know if I can ever go back,” Rowan whispered, surprising himself with the admission. “To the old work. The old cities. The old me.”
The fox’s tail brushed his calf, a touch like the edge of a candle-flame—there and gone, not burning, just reminding.
A new charm flipped. On it was drawn a figure walking forward, leaving behind a tangled scribble, stepping toward a horizon that curved slightly like the spine of a book.
Rowan laughed, the sound half a hiccup. “You’re really committed to the bit, huh?”
He hesitated one last time. Then he faced the crossing of paths, the knot of tracks, the invitation of worlds.
“I’ll find it,” he said. “A place that feels… not just like a waypoint. Not just a pit stop between assignments. A place to arrive. Even if I haven’t seen it yet.”
The fox’s eyes brightened. Every lit lantern along its body pulsed in agreement, like a soft chorus of yes.
Rowan took a step forward.
The world shivered.
For a heartbeat, all the paths overlapped—the train, the forest, the alley, starship gantries and old roads and something that looked like a tavern door carved with a fox and a lantern crossed together. Warm light spilled from that door, voices rising in welcome, the scent of spiced cider and woodsmoke curling out like an embrace.
Rowan’s heart reached for it with a longing so sharp it was almost pain.
Then the vision blurred. The tavern door dimmed and slid sideways, becoming just another maybe, one of a thousand lanterns that hadn’t yet been lit.
“Not yet,” he breathed.
Not yet. But someday.
He chose a direction—not at random, not in reaction, but because something quiet inside him leaned that way and did not flinch.
As his boot came down on the gravel, the path steadied. The mist thinned. Ahead, the way unrolled, uncharted but walkable.
Rowan did not look back.
If he had, he would have seen the lantern-fox watching from the edge of the crossing, its charms folding flat, its tiny images dimming one by one. He would have seen the fox lift its head toward the unseen tavern-that-wasn’t-yet, as if checking a lantern on an invisible hook. He would have heard, perhaps, the soft chiming laugh that wasn’t sound at all but the shimmer of a promise made to no one and to everyone:
I will find the lost. I will guide the weary. When the door is built, they will already know the way.
But Rowan only felt a warmth at his back, like a hand resting there in blessing. It faded slowly as he walked, leaving behind something steadier: a thread of courage stitched where fear had been.
The drizzle eased. The sky brightened to a cool, clear twilight in which no one clock held authority. Ahead, a signpost appeared where none had been, its arrows blank, waiting.
Rowan smiled.
“Fine,” he said. “We’ll write the map as we go.”
He adjusted his pack and walked on into the place between worlds, the echo of lantern-light still glowing faintly at his heels
Maxfield Willow 