The sun began to set in the brisk winter air: the night of the festival had arrived. A young woman stepped onto the now-familiar dirt path to the farmhouse, the scent of a wood fire and sweet spiced vin brulé welcoming her as she approached the old farmhouse. The others were already there, stirring hot chocolate over the fire, folding paper, placing tea light candles in small glass jars—green, amber, yellow—along the path into the dark.
She said, “Should we not stand at the road to welcome people? How will they know this is the way?”
The old ones shrugged. “They will know.”
She thought this careless. Why mark the path but not greet them? There were hands enough for both.
They sent her to check on the gate at the end of the path, the one she had arrived from, where dirt and stone became road and city. As she approached, one person after another stopped her asking, “Is it here?” The last arrived just as she finished her work, and so she offered to walk together back towards the farmhouse.
“I come here almost every day,” the newcomer said, “but it is so different at night.”
The woman said nothing then, but returned to the others saying, “You see? They were uncertain of the way.“
The old ones only nodded and continued their preparations. By now the hour was near upon them. After finishing her last tasks, the woman slipped away to watch from a distance as people arrived from the street.
Some had come before and strode knowingly down the path toward the festival. Others rehearsed an unscripted ritual: they stopped at the edge where the flickering lights began, looked around, looked at one another—sometimes companions, sometimes strangers.
“I knew it,” she thought to herself. “Next year we must have someone at the road.”
But she continued to watch. The ritual unfolded: an uncertain glance, a shrug, words exchanged too quiet for her to hear. They looked again at the two columns of little flames snaking out into the darkness.
And then, one after another, they stepped forward, following the candles wherever the night led.