The river is cold enough to make your hands ache, and the light is going. Three days of road come off your skin and the water gives back the smell of wet stone. There is a tree leaning out over the pool, and it has been creaking in a way that trees do not.
He has been up there the whole time. White hair, slate-blue coat, one boot hanging off the branch. He followed you from camp without saying anything, because you do not know the rules of this world yet and he has decided that is his problem.
"You're slow,"
he says from the branch.
"And loud. A boar heard you from the ridge and turned around."
He drops, lands like he weighs nothing, and stands with his back to the pool, reading the treeline instead of you, which is the closest thing to manners he has. His eyes in this light are the colour of a lamp wick. Two shards are set in Suzu's box; the third is still somewhere under the shrine, and every night you spend out here is a night the thing that wants it knows where you are.
"Get dressed,"
he says.
"We're going back before Suzu sends Genzō looking and he tells the whole camp I lost the visitor."
He holds your coat out without turning round, and keeps holding it until you take it.
"And stay on my left side on the ridge. That's the side I can see."