The hammer rang once. A spark jumped off the anvil and did not go out. It waited. They followed.

It skipped across the Green and into the print shop. It stopped on the long table, next to a square of paper.

"Fold me, I won't mind," said Kami.

"Somewhere with snow," said Lan. "I've never seen real snow."

"Then start with a puppy," said Kami. "Puppies like snow."

They folded Kami corner to corner into a triangle. They folded the two side corners down for ears. They folded the bottom tip up for a nose. A little paper puppy face.

The last crease went flat, and the paper opened like a door.

It was cold. That was the first thing. Their breath made little clouds.

They stood in a small wooden house. The floor was covered in straw mats. A little iron stove ticked in the corner, and the walls were sliding screens of thin white paper.

"Japan," said Kami softly. "Tokyo. The year is 1954."

A girl knelt at a low table. In front of her lay an envelope and one blank sheet of writing paper.

"I'm Hana," she said. "My cousin Yuki turns five next week. She lives far away, up in the mountains. I want to send her a paper puppy to fold herself."

"So tell her how," said Lan.

"That's the problem," said Hana. "Yuki can't read yet. And nobody at her house knows how to fold one."

"I'll do it!" said Lan. "I promise. I'll write it all down." She took the pencil and started. "Take the top corner down to the bottom corner. Then take the left corner, but not all the way, and..."

The words ran on. They filled one line, then two, then half the page. And they had only done the first fold.

"Yuki can't read words," said Mark. He had been looking at a scroll on the wall. "Lines don't lie, but long letters lose people. Read the drawing first."

Lan stopped. She looked at the half page of words. Yuki would see only squiggles.

"I promised before I checked," she said. "Sorry, Hana."

Through an open screen they could see into the next room. A man in a dark jacket sat at another low table. He was drawing with a brush, very slowly. Folded paper animals stood beside him: a crane, a frog, a little dog.

He did not look up. He did not explain.

Mark went to the doorway and looked at the drawings drying on the mat. "Read the drawing before your hands move," he said. "Look. A dashed line means fold here, toward you. A line of dashes and dots means fold it behind. And this curved arrow shows which way the paper goes."

"No words at all," said Hana.

"Every line on the drawing has a job," said Mark.

"Corner to corner," said Cornelia. "Make the corners meet exactly."

She folded the top corner of a square down onto the bottom corner. A triangle.

Hana drew it. A square standing on its point. A dashed line across the middle. A curved arrow from the top corner down to the bottom one.

"That's the first fold," said Hana. "Yuki could understand that."

Inkling drew the next picture, for the first ear. "Wait, I can name it," she said. "It's an ear arrow." She drew the arrow pointing up.

Lan folded from the picture, exactly as it said. The ear stuck straight up, sharp and pointy.

"That's not a puppy," said Hana, giggling. "That's a cat."

Inkling went pink. She had named it too soon.

"Crooked is just a first go," said Crinkle. "Smooth it out and try again. The crease remembers."

Lan opened the ear. Inkling turned the arrow round so it curved down. Lan folded again, and the ear flopped down beside the face. A floppy puppy ear.

They drew the other ear the same way.

"Hold it still," said Presso. "Now press it flat."

Presso pressed each test fold, so the paper stayed put while Hana drew it. The last fold lifted the bottom tip up into a little nose.

Hana laid the pictures out in a row. The plain square first. Then one picture for each fold.

"Four folds," said Inkling, counting. "And the square before them. Five pictures." This time she was right.

"Every fold makes me something new," said Kami. "Now test it. Someone who has never seen the puppy must fold it from the pictures alone."

Hana's little neighbour, Mio, was playing outside in the snow. She was four, and she could not read either.

Lan gave her a square and the five pictures. Then Lan sat on her hands and did not say a word. That was the hardest part.

Mio looked at the first picture. She folded the corner down. She looked at the next one, and the next. When she reached the last picture, she held up a little paper puppy with two floppy ears.

Hana drew two eyes on it. Then she put the pictures in the envelope. On the front she wrote just one word: YUKI.

Lan found a plain square in her pocket. They unfolded it flat, and the door closed behind them.

The spark dimmed to a warm dot and settled back on the anvil. The Green was just the Green again.

Back on the Green

At the print shop, Lan wanted to show her baby brother how to fold a boat. She did not write a single word. She drew a dashed line and one arrow.

Tell the story back to someone. Why did the ear arrow have to point down?