A Legacy of Dust and Promise

The fence had given up overnight, a warp in the top rail bowing toward the sheep pasture. Elara crouched beside the post and laid her palm to the damp dirt. Morning mist slicked her fingers. The earth smelled like moss and wet leaves, like a promise she could never quite catch.

“Just a little,” she told the ground, her voice too steady for how fast her heart was beating. “Grow and hold.”

She focused where the post was split, where wood had separated with a jagged mouth. The spell was simple. Speak to the roots, coax them up, weave them around the break until the fence held. She’d done it once—years ago—with the elder’s hand on her shoulder. She hadn’t been able to repeat it since.

Elara breathed in, counted to three, and pushed warmth from her chest down her arm. A thin tingling gathered in her palm, the sort that made her fingers itch and her skin feel stretched. Whisperwood, she thought. Vines like the ones that climbed the well. Strong. Patient.

Something stirred. The dirt shifted. A pale coil nudged up through the soil, slender as a child’s thumb. It trembled, reaching, and in that movement she felt a flicker of joy. “Yes,” she whispered, urging the energy forward, trying to be gentle. “Come on.”

More tendrils crept through. They found each other, brushed and curled, seeking the gap in the fence. She guided them with a quiet focus, hand hovering, sweat beading along her hairline despite the cool. It took all her attention to keep the threads from snapping. The vines reached the broken rail and looped around, a hesitant embrace.

Hold. She pushed.

Leaf buds unfurled—small, pale, hopeful. The vines tightened. For a beat, the rail steadied.

Then the leaves sagged.

The green drained from them as if someone had poured it back into the earth. The little loops loosened. The vines went slack and slid away from the wood, drying to brown in her hands. By the time she let out the breath she’d been holding, the tendrils had shriveled, collapsing into brittle threads that fell back into the dirt like dead spiders.

Elara’s stomach dropped. The absence of the magic was worse than the attempt, like stepping down onto a stair that wasn’t there. She pulled her hand back and wiped her fingers on her skirt, crushing a smear of soil into the already faded fabric.

“Ah,” a voice said softly behind her. “You tried early.”

She didn’t need to turn to know who it was. Elder Mirel’s steps were light for a woman whose hair was more white than gray. She carried the smell of dried rosemary and smoke with her, as if the herbs were tucked into her clothing and the hearth had claimed her for its own. Elara stood, brushing a smear of dirt from her knee that only smeared more.

“I thought it would be easier before the sun gets high,” Elara said. She meant before anyone saw.

Mirel’s gaze fell to the limp vines like one might look at a bird with a broken wing. She rested her hand on the top rail and leaned, testing the give. The fence sighed.

“Elara,” she said, and there was no judgment in it, only the soft rounding of the name. “Show me what you felt.”

Elara swallowed. Showing meant admitting she’d felt almost nothing. Still, she placed her palm back to the ground. The soil was cool. She closed her eyes and reached—past the brittle failures and the heat in her cheeks, past the memory of children at the last festival coaxing flowers to dance in the air while she clapped politely. She found the thin thread again, the one she always found, as narrow and slippery as a stream in drought.

“There,” she said, barely above a whisper. She nudged it. Another pale sprout pushed through the dirt, fragile and slow. It lifted like it hurt to move. Elara guided it toward the post, careful as if it were a glass bottle in her hands.

Mirel watched, her face unreadable. The sprout wrapped once around the split and then loosened. It drooped in Elara’s fingers. She could feel the thread fray, her control eroding like sand through a sieve. When she tried to hold on, it broke. The vine took on that dull, dying quality she knew too well. She pulled her hand away before it completed the ritual of wither and fall.

She didn’t realize her throat had tightened until she had to force her next breath. “I’m sorry,” she said, and hated how small it sounded.

Mirel shook her head, the lines at the corner of her eyes deepening in something like fondness. “Sorry for what? For trying? For being honest? The ground will forgive you long before you forgive yourself.”

Elara looked at the fence instead of the elder. A length of twine hung from one post, frayed and old, and she wanted to tie the whole thing together with it and pretend it was enough. “It should be simple,” she said. “It is for everyone else.”

“Some are born with sun at their backs,” Mirel said, stooping to pick up the dead vine and rolling it between her fingers. It crumbled into nothing. “Some must learn to ask for it. Do not confuse an early breeze with winter.”

The words were kind. They were also the same words Mirel had used before, and before that. They landed on Elara’s shoulders anyway, warm and heavy. She nodded because she didn’t trust herself to speak without letting the old envy out where it could embarrass her. She could still remember Lysa—willowy and bright—dancing in the square last year with vines threaded through her hair, making them blossom with a laugh. People had clapped and someone had lifted her onto a barrel to see better. Elara had stood at the edge, hands tucked into her sleeves, and told herself she didn’t mind.

Mirel crouched where Elara had been and pressed her own palm to the dirt. There was no flinch, no drawn breath. A single, sturdy vine rose, green deep as summer. It wound around the split rail and tightened, thickening as it went, the leaves glossy and vibrant. The fence straightened with a soft groan. When Mirel lifted her hand away, it held.

Elara’s face burned, shame stinging sharp and sudden. She wanted to be happy the fence was mended. She wished that was all she felt. “I could have done that,” she said, and heard the lie in her own voice.

Mirel stood, brushing soil from her knees. “You will,” she said simply. “Not today. Not like this.”

Elara’s hands toyed with the frayed end of the twine. “It’s always not today.”

“For you, it is not today yet.” Mirel’s hand hovered for a moment, as if she would touch Elara’s arm, then didn’t. “There are other ways to be of use. Finn said you were going to the Whisperwood later. He’ll need that eye of yours. The forest listens to you, even when the vines are stubborn.”

Elara let out a breath through her nose. The Whisperwood did make sense to her in a way that spells didn’t. She could find a path where others got lost. She could taste a leaf and know if it would ease a fever. Somehow that was both comfort and a reminder of her limits.

“I’ll take him,” she said. “We’ll bring back marigold and tansy, if the north slope hasn’t been picked clean.”

Mirel smiled, small and genuine. “You see? You already think like someone the village needs.” She started down the path, then paused and looked back. “Elara.” When Elara met her eyes, the elder’s own softened. “A slow-blooming flower is no less beautiful, child.”

Elara held the elder’s gaze until the words were tucked somewhere safe and painful. When Mirel was gone, she reached out and pressed a fingertip to one of the new vine’s leaves. It was smooth and cool, resilient under her touch. Her throat ached.

She tied the loose length of twine into a neat knot around the post because it made her feel useful. Then she brushed the dirt from her skirt again and turned toward the path that led home, already mentally sorting baskets and knives, already calling the forest by its old names to steady herself. The fence stood straight behind her. The dead vines crumbled into the earth, unseen.

Finn was waiting on the stoop when she reached the cottage, a basket balanced on his knees and his curls refusing any attempt at order. He sprang up when he saw her, eyes bright with the kind of energy she sometimes envied.

“You promised midday,” he said, thrusting the basket at her as if she might change her mind.

“It is midday,” she said, tipping her chin toward the slant of the sun. “Close enough. Did you sharpen the knife?”

He pulled the small blade from his belt and presented it for inspection. The edge was clean, the handle oiled with the beeswax she kept in a clay pot on the shelf. She nodded approval and handed it back. He beamed like she’d given him an award.

They cut across the common and followed the footpath that slipped into the trees. The Whisperwood greeted them with the low hum of insects and the soft hush of leaves brushing one another. Light broke into scattered coins on the ground. Elara felt the familiar looseness in her shoulders as the village sounds fell away. Here, the air tasted like sap and green things. Here, she could be useful.

“Marigold first?” Finn asked, lengthening his stride to keep up when the path narrowed.

“On the south edges where the light’s better,” she said. “Then tansy along the stream. Avoid the lower bank; it floods when the beavers get ambitious.”

“You make it sound like they do it on purpose.”

“They do,” she said dryly, and he laughed.

They passed an old oak with a hollow base. Elara paused to press her palm to the bark. It was warm where the sun had soaked into it. The oak had stood since before she was born; it had seen floods and early frosts and two summers of caterpillars that stripped it bare. It had endured. She took strength from that.

Finn darted off the path when he spotted the first cluster of yellow. “Found them,” he called, kneeling in the grass. “Big heads.”

Elara joined him and tapped his wrist. “Not the open ones,” she said. “They’re already past their best. Buds and fresh petals. The elder likes them that way for salves.”

He made a face at the open flowers and moved to the younger plants. He cut cleanly, leaving enough stem. His tongue stuck out of the corner of his mouth in concentration. Elara crouched and gathered her own, letting her fingers move with the surety of long practice. She checked each plant for signs of rot or blight, for insects that would hitch a ride home and ruin a basket. She showed Finn how to look for the faint dusting of mildew that liked to hide under the lower leaves. He listened. He always did.

They worked in companionable quiet until the basket was a cheerful jumble of yellow and green. The air shifted cooler as they went deeper, the path dipping toward the stream. Elara led them off the main track when the ground began to slope, cutting along a line of stones she knew would keep their boots dry even after last night’s rain. Finn almost misstepped, and she caught his elbow.

“Watch,” she said. “The moss looks solid but it’s slick. Step where the rock shows. Remember where roots twist under the soil. They will catch you if you’re not paying attention.”

“I am paying attention,” he said, but he leaned into her steadying hand anyway.

The stream was quick and bright, pulling sunlight along its surface like thread. Tansy grew in tall stands along the bank, feathery and ready. Elara waded into the shallows, the chill soaking through her boots, and began to cut. The smell was sharp and comforting.

“Do you ever want to leave?” Finn asked suddenly, his voice carrying over the water. He was sitting on a flat stone, tossing pebbles so they skipped twice before sinking.

Elara glanced at him. “Leave the stream? Not with the tansy right in front of me.”

“Silverwood,” he said, cheeks coloring as if he regretted asking. “People talk sometimes. About the cities. About towers you can’t see the top of and markets where you can buy fruit from other lands.”

She considered his profile, the familiar slope of his nose and the way his hair curled damp around his ears. He was almost as tall as she was now. How had that happened? “I like stories about towers,” she said, trimming a stem and laying it carefully in the basket. “I like knowing they exist. But when I wake up, I want to hear our rooster and not street hawkers. I want to know which stones in the path are loose. I want to know which tree has the best view of the first snowfall. I like that if I go to the river at dusk, I might see the deer at the same place they always cross.”

“That sounds like a no,” he said, but his smile was soft.

She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll go once, to see. And then come back. I don’t think I could sleep without the Whisperwood talking to me.”

“It doesn’t talk,” he said, throwing another stone. It plopped instead of skipping and he grimaced.

“It does,” she said. “You just don’t listen yet.”

He rolled his eyes, but when a breeze threaded along the water and set the leaves to a soft tremble, he went quiet. Elara watched his shoulders ease. His worries were always right under his skin; she could feel them as if they were her own.

“You don’t have to worry about the talk,” she said, turning back to her work. “You’ll see towers when you’re ready. Or you’ll make one here, and everyone will be jealous because ours will have better bread.”

He laughed. “Our bread is better.”

“It is.” She paused, then added, “And if you ever wanted to go, I’d walk you to the last bend, and I’d put enough dried apples in your pack to make your teeth ache.”

“You’d walk with me,” he said. He didn’t make it a question.

“To the edge and back,” she said. “And if anyone tried to give you trouble on the road, I’d introduce them to the business end of your knife.”

He glanced at his knife with an expression that was half pride and half disbelief. “You don’t even like to gut fish.”

“I don’t have to like something to be good at it,” she said. “Besides, for you? I’d gut a hundred fish.”

He made a face. “That’s horrible.”

She bumped his shoulder with hers, and he leaned into it, warm and solid.

When the tansy basket was two-thirds full, they cut back into the trees to look for yarrow. Elara steered them toward a rocky outcrop where the soil was thin and the plants had to be hardy. She knelt and showed Finn the difference between the edible leaves and the look-alike that would turn a stomach. He repeated the distinctions back to her until she was sure he could pick in the half-light if he needed to.

A flash of movement drew her attention—a hare darting across the path and vanishing under bracken. Finn missed it. She put a hand out to stop him, then moved it to his shoulder, grounding him.

“There’s an old fox den up past those birches,” she said quietly. “We’ll skirt left. She has kits this season.”

“You can tell?” His voice dropped to match hers.

“The tracks are fresh.” She pointed out the faint claw marks in the soft dirt and the tufts of fur caught on the edge of a low branch. “She’s hunting hard. We won’t disturb her.”

He nodded, solemn. He liked animals better than people; Elara sometimes thought it was because they asked less of him. She led them around the den and back toward the path, marking the places where water pooled and where the ground rose, invisible half-steps that would turn an ankle if you didn’t know them. She knew them. She traced them like the lines of her own palm.

By the time the light began to shift toward afternoon, their baskets were heavy and the straps had carved faint lines into their shoulders. Finn lagged, and she slowed, letting him catch up. He handed her a piece of dried pear he’d secreted in his pocket and pretended he hadn’t kept both the biggest and the second biggest for himself. She pretended not to notice.

“Do you think Elder Mirel really thinks I’m any good?” he asked around a mouthful, suddenly shy.

“She doesn’t pretend,” Elara said. “If she says you’re good, you are. And you are.” She bumped him again, lighter this time. “You remember what matters.”

He kicked at a fallen leaf. “So do you.”

She didn’t answer. She didn’t know how to explain the knot of wanting that sat behind her ribs. Wanting to be enough for this place, for these people. Wanting to be useful in a way that didn’t fall apart in her hands. The forest gave her that, in pieces. It would be enough. It had to be.

At the edge of the trees, the village opened like a cupped hand. Smoke traced thin lines into the sky. Children ran between cottages, their shouts carrying. Elara slowed and looked back once. The Whisperwood loomed quiet and green, holding their paths and secrets. She touched Finn’s head, fingers sliding through his hair in a gesture she’d been making since he was small.

“Let’s get these to Mirel,” she said. “Then you can brag to anyone who will listen about how you rescued your incompetent sister from drowning in the stream.”

He smirked. “I would never.”

“You absolutely would.”

They walked on, baskets bumping their hips, the forest at their backs and the village ahead, the day folding into the next piece of itself with steady, familiar ease. Elara breathed in the scent of crushed tansy and sun-warmed wood and felt, for a brief, clean moment, exactly where she belonged.

They turned down the lane toward Elder Mirel’s cottage, the baskets tugging at their shoulders, when the world went thin.

It wasn’t sound. It wasn’t the wind. It was as if the air itself pulled tight like a held breath. The sunlight slid out of place, just a fraction, dimmed and then returned. Elara’s foot faltered. The ground tilted under her, a slow, wrong roll like a boat taking a wave. Her vision sharpened and then blurred, the edges of the cottages wavering. Cold swept up her spine, quick and fine as a thread of ice.

She stopped without meaning to, one hand flying to the fence post at her side. The wood was rough beneath her palm, reassuringly solid. For an instant, everything seemed layered—her hand on the post, her hand reaching for it, the ghost of her hand a blink ahead of where it should be. She blinked hard, and the layers snapped together. The warmth of the afternoon rushed back like water.

“Hey.” Finn’s voice was close, unalarmed. He had gone a few paces ahead and turned when he realized she wasn’t with him. He squinted into her face. “You okay?”

Elara swallowed. The taste in her mouth was metallic and unfamiliar. She could see dust in the sunlight, each mote briefly frozen and then streaming again. “I—fine,” she said, breath shorter than it should have been. “Just stood up too fast.”

“You were standing,” he pointed out, deadpan, and that almost pulled a laugh from her.

She made herself straighten. The fence post left a pattern in her skin. “Then the air moved too fast,” she said, forcing lightness into her tone as she brushed her fingers over the faint indents. “I’m dramatic.”

Finn tipped his head, considering her with the seriousness he wore when deciding if a mushroom was safe. His gaze flicked to the sky, the same bright blue it had been all afternoon. He looked back, shrugged one shoulder, and bumped his basket against hers. “Maybe you need a sweet. You didn’t eat enough at midday.”

“I ate your pear,” she said.

“One pear does not a meal make.”

“That’s not how the saying goes.”

“It is now,” he said solemnly, then broke into a grin. He reached into his pocket and produced a piece of honeyed nut brittle wrapped in cloth, slightly melted and stuck in irregular shards. He held it out like a bribe.

“You were holding out on me,” she said, grateful, and took a bite. The sugar cracked between her teeth and the sharp sweetness washed the metallic taste away. The dizziness receded by small degrees, leaving a faint echo like after a bell stops ringing.

They started walking again. Elara kept a tiny sliver of herself watching the light, the feel of the path under her boots, the rhythm of her breath. Everything seemed normal now. A woman drew water at the pump and called to her son, who tore past with a stick for a sword. A dog slept on a stoop, twitching in its dream. The smoke from the baker’s oven climbed straight up, no odd stutter in its rise.

She didn’t tell Finn about the moment when the world had doubled. He would worry, and she had no explanation. What would she say? The sun blinked? The air pinched? It sounded ridiculous even in her head. The old folk talked about thin places in the forest where you could walk between summer and winter in three steps, but this was the lane by Mirel’s garden with its neat rows of sage and lavender, with the rosemary bush she’d helped prune in spring. Thinness didn’t belong here.

By the time they reached the cottage, the sensation had faded to a memory that made the small hairs on her arms rise when she thought of it. Elder Mirel opened the door before they could knock, as if she had been listening for their steps. She was a spare-boned woman with a line of gray braid down her back and more wrinkles around her eyes than last year. Those eyes swept over Elara, lingering for a heartbeat on her face, then dropped to the baskets.

“You found good tansy,” she said approvingly, taking Finn’s basket first. “And the yarrow. Mm. Clean cuts. No bruising.” She set the baskets on the table and reached to squeeze Finn’s shoulder. “You did well.”

Finn flushed with pleasure. “Elara did most of it,” he said.

Elara shook her head. “He chose the best plants,” she said, deflecting, and began pulling stems free of the tangle to lay on the drying rack. The routine steadied her. The crackle of parchment, the warm air inside the cottage scented with herbs and a faint undertone of must. The way Mirel hummed under her breath when she worked, a tuneless sound that always made Elara think of summers that never quite got hot enough to be uncomfortable.

Mirel moved around them with economy, her hands sure. “The harvest dance starts at dusk,” she said. “You’ll both be there?”

Finn groaned in exaggerated distress. “I don’t dance.”

“You step in time and you smile,” Mirel said. “That counts.” She reached for Elara’s forearm as Elara passed her a bundle. Her fingers were cool and surprisingly strong. “You look pale, child.”

Elara opened her mouth to shrug it off, then closed it. “A spell of…lightheadedness,” she admitted. “It passed.”

Mirel’s fingers tightened once, then released. “Eat,” she advised. “Salt and sweet both. And drink water. Sometimes the day tips under your feet if you’ve been working since dawn.”

“We weren’t that early,” Finn protested. “We slept until—”

“—until the rooster crowed three times,” Elara said, because it would reassure Mirel and because it was almost true. She accepted the cup of cool water Mirel handed her and drank, letting it sit on her tongue before she swallowed. Simple, solid things. Water, wood, the familiar creak of the elder’s chair as she sat.

By the time they’d hung the last of the tansy, the oddness had retreated to a corner of her mind. Elara knew her body. It had warned her when a storm was brewing and when she’d pushed too hard and needed to rest. This had been new, a cold thread through a warm day, but nothing else had shifted. Finn chattered about which stall might have cinnamon cakes later, and Mirel assigned them each a small bag of dried willow bark to deliver on their way home. The ordinariness was a balm.

When they stepped back outside, the light lay soft and even across the village. The shadows had lengthened, gentle and long. Elara paused on the threshold, lifted her face to the sun, and breathed. The sky did not dim. The air did not tighten.

“See?” Finn said, misreading the tilt of her chin as indecision. “You’ll dance. I’ll stand at the edge and clap like a proper supportive brother. Then we’ll find those cakes.”

“Brave of you,” she said, and let the door swing shut behind them.

If there was a flaw in the day, it would have to wait its turn. She had deliveries to make, a dress to brush out, and a brother to drag into at least one circle of steps whether he liked it or not. Whatever had passed through her like a chill would be one more small, strange moment, explained away and forgotten by morning. She told herself that, and the telling made it feel true enough to carry.

By dusk the green was strung with lanterns, their paper skins painted with wheat sheaves and moons. Music drifted from the square, a fiddle riding above the steady thrum of drum and handclaps. Elara let herself be pulled toward it with the tide of neighbors, Finn at her side until he spotted his friends and veered off with a shouted promise to return when the cakes came out.

She lingered at the edge. The harvest dance always bloomed wide, the circles opening to take in anyone who wanted in. This year it felt like a ring she could not quite step through. The lane’s dust was tamped smooth by footsteps, and the scent of spiced cider and roasting squash wrapped around her. Laughter cracked like sparks. Around her, magic flowed in small, easy ways she had learned to stop looking for in herself.

Deva lit the lanterns with a flick of her finger, smiling when a child clapped at the trick. Jorin, the blacksmith’s apprentice, rolled a coin over his knuckles and, with a breath, made it hover an inch above his palm, glinting as it spun lazily. A girl from the hill farms coaxed blossoms from a dead twig and tucked one into her hair like she had been born to do it.

Elara held her cup of cider and watched. When she was small, she had thought she would grow into it, like the way your body catches up to your feet and hands after a summer of tripping over them. But nothing had arrived. Her magic stayed like the ivy leafings that browned at the edges when she asked them to climb, like the fence that had sagged back in on itself this morning no matter how she willed it sturdy. She felt it tonight as a dull ache under her breastbone, the tug of wanting to be part of the gentle showmanship and the padded certainty of knowing she was not.

The music shifted, the line dance becoming a spinning circle. Finn slipped in, despite his claims. He stumbled once, then found the rhythm. Elara smiled despite herself as he was spun past by a girl his age with her hair in a braid. His ears were red.

She turned away to make room for others to watch and nearly collided with Elder Mirel. The elder stood with a thin shawl around her shoulders, her braid reminding Elara of a straight path. The lines around her mouth deepened when she smiled. “You didn’t make him do that,” Mirel said, eyes following Finn’s clumsy feet. “Miracles.”

“Elara the miracle worker,” Elara said dryly, then softened it with a small laugh. She lifted her cup. “Cider?”

Mirel shook her head and slipped her arm through Elara’s, steering her toward a bench by the well, set back enough that the music and talk came to them as a soft weave. The elder lowered herself carefully. Elara sat beside her, grateful for the brief quiet. The lantern light painted Mirel’s profile in warm lines.

“Tell me what sits on you,” Mirel said, not looking at her.

Elara looked at her hands. The knuckles were nicked and healing from brambles. She curled her fingers around the cup. “Aside from the weight of Finn’s dignity resting on my shoulders? It’s nothing. Today felt…odd for a moment, that’s all.” She didn’t mean to say even that, but the words slid out. The elder had a way of making silence an invitation.

Mirel hummed, the same tuneless thread she used while working. “Some days do.” She lifted her gaze to the lanterns, which rose and fell slightly in the evening breeze. “And some nights remind us of what we are not.”

Elara huffed a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Do I look that pathetic?”

“You look like someone who watches and finds herself outside of what she sees,” Mirel said gently. “It is not a crime to be at the edge, Elara.”

“It feels like one when everyone else seems…at home in themselves.” The admission scraped her throat. “They make sparks for children and weave flowers from twigs and light lanterns without flint. I ask a vine to climb and it withers. I ask a fence to stand and it sags. And then this afternoon—” She cut herself off. She didn’t know what the afternoon had been, only that it had left her with the sense of being under the wrong sky for a breath.

Mirel’s fingers found hers, a brief squeeze. “You gather around what you can do and you make a life from it. You know the forest’s moods. You bring me plants cut like they were taught to be cut. You keep your brother’s feet on the ground.” Mirel’s mouth twitched. “You are not a lantern-lighter. You are other things.”

“It feels small,” Elara said, the truth coming out in a low rush. “When I was younger, I told myself there would be a moment. That it would show up and I’d stop putting all my wanting into a sack and carrying it around like a fool. But I’m still waiting.”

“A slow-blooming flower is no less beautiful, child.” Mirel’s voice was simple, no grandness to it. She set her hand over Elara’s where it rested on the bench. “Some take their whole season to open. You cannot pry at the petals to hurry them and expect to see anything but bruises.”

Elara looked at the elder’s hand, at the familiar brushed-smooth skin. “What if it never opens?”

Mirel’s eyes were kind. “Then it is something else entirely, and you learn to love that shape.” She shifted, leaning back. A young man passed, and Mirel nodded in thanks when he offered her a fresh cup, which she took this time. “There are magics in this world that do not announce themselves in a square with lanterns and music. There are strengths. Most of them do not care to be seen by everyone to be worth something.” She tilted her head. “And sometimes, Elara, what we think of as small is only waiting because it knows the right season better than we do.”

Elara let the words sink in, slow as honey. Around them, someone whooped as a child made a tiny spark in his palm and crowed with triumph. The pain in her chest loosened a fraction. “You always know what to say,” she murmured.

“I know how to watch,” Mirel corrected. “And I know you.” She patted Elara’s knee. “Tonight, eat, drink, laugh if it comes. Stand aside if you want. You have nothing to prove. You are not less because your magic does not do tricks on command.” She took a sip, then added, voice lower, “And if you feel that oddness again, you come to me.”

Elara turned to her. “You think it’s something.”

“I think the world is full of moments that do not belong to today, and sometimes they brush up against us,” Mirel said, as if discussing the weather. “It doesn’t have to be a danger to be real.” She smiled. “And even if it is a danger, you are not alone with it.”

The bench, the elder’s hand, the hum of the square—Elara breathed them in. The ache didn’t vanish, but it was held, smaller for being shared. She looked back to the dancers. Finn had found his grin and lost his awkwardness. He saw her watching and made a face, which she returned, exaggerated enough to make him laugh.

“I’ll bring you a cake,” Elara said.

“You’ll bring me two,” Mirel said serenely. “One to share, one to hide by my bed from the old men who think they are owed my sweets.”

Elara laughed, the sound true in her mouth. She rose, relieved of the need to step into the spinning ring, content for the moment to skirt its edge. She touched Mirel’s shoulder in thanks.

As she threaded through the crowd toward the baker’s stall, the lantern light brushed her cheek. She passed Deva and Jorin and the hill girl with the blossom in her hair and felt the sting less, dulled by the elder’s words. She wasn’t cured of wanting. But she could carry it without it dragging her feet.

At the baker’s, the heat of the ovens flushed her face. She chose two cinnamon cakes, sugared tops shining, and balanced them on a wooden plate. As she turned back toward the bench, laughter skated over the square, and the music swelled. Somewhere behind the press of bodies, a stranger’s silhouette stood on the ridge, rigid and watchful, dark against the rising moons. Elara felt the barest prickle on the back of her neck and told herself it was the night finally cooling. She held the cakes carefully and made her way back to Mirel, the elder’s words steady steps in her mind.

By the time the cakes were eaten and Finn had been bundled off with his friends to sleep in a tangle of pallets and blankets on Jorin’s floor, the square had thinned. The lanterns bobbed a little lower, pools of light shrinking as the oil burned down. Elara helped Mirel to her door, waited while the elder found the extra cake she’d tucked beneath her shawl and pressed it into Elara’s hands with a conspirator’s wink, then stood on the threshold while Mirel’s small house took the night into itself, shutters closed against the breeze.

The path home took her away from the last of the laughter. The sounds of the celebration became a hush, like a river heard from far off. The air had cooled and the smell of trampled grass and spilled cider settled. She walked with the plate under her arm and her other hand trailing along fence posts, feeling the smoothness of wood worn by years of palms and shoulders. The stars were sharp. The two moons climbed, one a pale coin, the other a thin crescent like a cut.

The ridge loomed like a long back above the village. She had seen it every day of her life and had climbed it to sit and look at the pattern of thatched roofs and the patchwork of fields. Tonight it drew her eyes like a hook. She told herself she was just looking at the way the moons silvered the grass, the way the black seam of the Whisperwood ran right up to it and stopped. But when she glanced up, there was someone there.

The figure stood still at the ridge’s edge, as precise as a mark. Not hunched like a farmer ending a long day. Not the loose stance of a boy out past curfew. The stranger’s outline was clean and straight, feet planted apart as if braced. A length on his back caught moonlight and threw it back; for a breath she thought it was a staff, then the shape read as something flatter, broader. A blade. Her skin tightened, a ripple she could not shake off.

She slowed. There was enough light to see the tilt of his head. He was not looking at the stars. His face turned toward the village, toward her, though it felt like his attention passed through her to the square, to the heart of what lay below. She could not see his eyes. She could feel the weight of them. Her heart did a small, hard flutter.

No one watched Silverwood like that. Caravans came through and their guards were watchful of their goods and of pickpockets, but they relaxed once their wagons were corralled. Travelers climbed the ridge to breathe and look and be small; they didn’t stand like a sentry cut from iron. Elara told herself she could laugh about it with Mirel in the morning. She told herself to keep walking because it was ridiculous to stop because a stranger was being dramatic at the edge of a hill.

Her feet stalled anyway. The fence at her right leaned a bit and she let her hand rest against its roughness, a grounding. The oddness from that afternoon, the dimming of light and the off-kilter second, pressed at the back of her thoughts, now paired with the fixed line of the stranger’s shoulders. She realized she had stopped breathing and let air out quietly through her nose, took it back in slowly.

He did not move. The village was a scatter of glow, soft radiance under his gaze. He could not have heard the way her pulse notched up. He could not know that something in her wanted to step backward into shadow like a rabbit smelling a hawk. She had never been timid on these lanes, yet her body had already decided the center of the path was too exposed. She shifted to the side, letting the old ash tree throw its shadow over her.

Her house lay two bends away. She could cut across by the granary and halve the time it took to reach her door. And what? Bolt herself in like a child who has scared herself with a story? The thought irritated her. Fear came in like cold under a door, uninvited and hard to drive out. She curled her fingers tighter around the wooden plate until the sugar on her skin tacky-sweetened.

On the ridge, a breeze must have touched him. His cloak—dark, heavy—moved. He lifted a hand. She couldn’t see if he touched the hilt on his back or simply adjusted the fall of cloth. The motion was unhurried. Deliberate. It did not feel like a man taking ease. It felt like a man taking measure.

She looked down the lane to where the square still burned warm. A couple kissed in the shadow of the well, oblivious. An old dog trotted, nose to ground. Nothing in the world had changed but the shape of one figure against the sky, and somehow, everything in her had leaped toward the alertness that arrives before trouble shows itself.

Go, she told herself. Move.

She stepped forward. The gravel under her soles popped softly. She didn’t look up again, refused to feed the prickle by giving it more of her attention. She walked as if she did every night, as if she hadn’t noticed anything beyond the usual—lanterns, laughter, the angle of the moons. She let her pace be steady. Her shadow flowed beside her, long and then shorter as she passed the ash, then long again.

At the turn that would take her to the granary, something pinched between her shoulders, a certainty that if she looked now, she would catch him moving, coming down from the ridge. The sense was so sharp she almost twisted. She didn’t. She kept on, the lane narrowing, hedges rising. The smell of crushed mint came up from the ditch where it grew wild. Her own gate stood at the top of a small rise, latch looped with twine to keep it from swinging in the wind.

Only when she reached it did she allow herself one more glance. The ridge cut the sky, empty. The figure was gone.

Her breath left in a thin line that was not relief. The emptiness was worse. Being watched was one thing you could name and then work around. Being watched and then not being watched, with no sign of where the watcher had gone—that set her nerves singing. The yards behind her were a checkerboard of gardens and sheds and woodpiles. She listened. A frog sang from the pond behind the cobbler’s. A door thumped closed near the green. No soft step in the grass. No clink of metal. Nothing.

She slipped through her gate and closed it without letting it click. Crossing her yard, she kept to the flagstones she knew didn’t creak underfoot because it was silly to think that matters outside a house, but she did it anyway. At her door, she slid the bolt fast, then stood with her forehead against the wood for a count of five, the smell of old cedar and smoke in her nose. Her hands were steady when she set the plate on the table. The steadiness felt like something she had put on like a garment, not something that belonged to her.

In bed, she lay on her side and watched the slice of moonlight crawl along the floorboard as the night turned. Sleep came slow. When it did, it was edged with the image of a straight back against the sky and a blade flashing dully, and the feeling of a second too long stretching around her like a net that hadn’t yet been pulled tight.

The ridge knifed the sky, and Kael stood at its crown, boots sunk in the dry grass, the night drawing a taut line through him. Silverwood lay in a bowl of soft lanternlight below, roofs like dark scales, smoke rising thin and steady. He kept his breathing even, in through his nose, out through his mouth, counting each cycle because control lived in simple things when the world bent and shifted under unseen hands.

The anomaly pressed like a chill against the bone rather than skin. It had begun as a whisper three weeks ago, a thin stutter in the currents that ran beneath the ordinary pace of days. He had followed it from hill to valley, from a burned village shrine whose candles never melted down to the stubs, to a dry wash where a hawk hung in the air a heartbeat too long before it stooped. Each sign small enough to doubt alone. Together, they formed a path. It led him here. It pulsed now, faint, steady, wrong.

He let his eyes trace the village without moving his head. You learned to look like a statue so you could see everything. Children had been carried home to bed not long ago—he could tell by the way the square’s noise had thinned. A carpenter’s shed had its doors propped open for the last heat to leave. An inn’s sign creaked as it rocked, and he filed the pitch away as a measure of the wind. His gaze skimmed the fence lines and the dark mass of the Whisperwood beyond, a black continent whose edge stopped a stone’s throw from cultivated fields. The forest had its own whispers. Tonight, it held its breath.

His right hand had no business hovering near the sword strapped to his back, yet it did. The blade wasn’t for whatever he hunted; steel did nothing to tangled time. He wore it because men were far worse than phantoms, and men could lay him in the ground before he reached the real fight. The medallion at his sternum lay under his shirt, warm as skin, the runic lines etched into it a familiar pattern to rub with his thumb. It hummed soft as a fly in a jar whenever a seam in the world loosened. It had been humming all day.

Extinct didn’t mean gone. The Order wrote careful words about the last of the chronomancers dying out after the Sundering, about rituals sealed and keys broken, but Kael had seen enough ash lie cold for a decade and then flare bright from one breath of wind. He knew what slept. He knew how quickly it woke when grief or rage fed it. The first place the anomaly had peeped—an orchard—had lost a ring of trees overnight to gray. Not cut. Not burned. Old age falling in a wave that didn’t match the season. He had knelt, pressed his fingers to a leaf, and watched it crumble to nothing under a touch that had never hurt green things. He had pressed two fingers to his eyelids until light sparked against the dark. If he closed his eyes now, he could feel the tiny, rigid thrum under everything, like a heartbeat under a cuirass.

Movement on a lane below. A woman. He saw her in a slice between two houses, a dark braid, a plate in her hands, the neat economy of her steps as if she had walked this path a thousand times and could do it blind. His attention brushed her, light as possible, testing for a flare, a hiccup in the air. The medallion ticked, a single, sharp tap. His head wanted to turn. He didn’t allow it. She passed into shadow under an ash and out again. The anomaly didn’t spike. His jaw eased a fraction. Not her, then. Or not yet.

He looked up at the moons, gauging the hour by their climb. He ran through his internal map: the routes in, the routes out, the places where a man could sleep without being seen, the places where something older might pool. The Whisperwood’s border, the stream that skirted the village, the rock bluff to the north pocked with nests of swifts. The sun would take this chill and burn it into a brittle day. He needed to be inside the pattern before then.

He listened harder. There—a note beneath silence. The particular hush when a second stretches thin. It shivered over him, a spider thread across the back of his neck. His shoulders tightened and smoothed again. Someone below had stopped at a gate and stood very still. It passed. He let breath go, slow. The medallion’s hum shifted, not louder, but nearer, as if whatever lay at the heart of it had turned its face a little toward him in its sleep.

He had a job. The Guardians didn’t leave villages to figure this out alone because people died when you asked them to. He slid a hand to his cloak, adjusted it to hide the sword better, and moved down the slope with a balance taught by years of patrol—weight placed in careful pauses, no stone rolling, no clank of buckle. The grass brushed his boots. The smell of crushed thyme rose. Lanternlight turned the lower air gold.

At the ridge’s foot, he stopped and looked back only with his mind’s eye, setting this vantage deep in memory. He felt for the thin seam of wrong again, the way a seamstress runs fingers along a garment’s stitch to find where thread catches. It ran right through Silverwood, faint and true. The last of his doubt flickered and fell away like a moth burned to nothing.

He would go in as a merchant. He would sleep under their roof and ask their questions in a friendly voice. He would watch who flinched when nothing touched them and who paused at the wrong times. He would find the center. And he would be gentle until he could not afford to be.

By the time Kael stepped onto the packed earth of the main lane, the village had tucked itself into its night. Windows glowed in small squares, doors were latched, and what little noise drifted out felt softened by the hour—cutlery laid aside, a chair scraped back, a woman humming to a child. He adjusted the leather strap at his shoulder to settle the wrapped bundle of goods against his back. The sword’s worn hilt rose over his left shoulder, shape unmistakable even with the cloak draped to shade it. He didn’t try to hide it completely. A man who pretended nothing dangerous could happen invited questions of the wrong kind.

Curious glances came anyway, sliding along him from shadow and threshold. Not alarm. Not here. People in small places wanted to belong to safety. He gave them the kind of nod that did not ask to be answered. His boots made a steady sound on the lane, not loud, not sneaking. He smelled stew, yeast, woodsmoke that had sunk into beams over decades. The medallion was quiet against his chest, warm and unreasonable, as if it took comfort from proximity to hearths.

The inn put its shoulder right against the square, a two-story structure with a bowed roof and a sign painted with a sheaf of wheat and a mug, the paint cracked at the edges from weather. Light pulsed warmly through its windows and around the edges of the door; the chatter inside was a low murmur with a laugh thrown up here and there like a gull over a wave. He paused a moment to smooth his features, then pushed the door open and went into it with the ease of a man who has done this in a hundred towns.

Heat hit first, and the good, dense smell of a place that fed people well. A fire banked low, tables with candles guttering, men bent over mugs and a pair of older women sharing a plate of bread and cheese near the hearth. Heads turned. Braced backs loosened when they saw the pack. The sword drew eyes, yes, the way a scar does—half curiosity, half superstition—but no one challenged him. The room’s attention relented in a soft wave. He moved to the bar.

The innkeeper was a barrel of a man with a tidy beard and sleeves rolled up to show forearms scarred by honest work rather than blades. He had a polishing cloth in his hand and the look of someone who sees every corner of his establishment without appearing to. He sized Kael up in one blink and then smiled with his mouth if not his eyes.

“Evening,” the man said. “You look like you’ve come a distance. What can I pour you?”

“Whatever you call your best,” Kael said, letting a tiredness roughen his tone, letting it pull his shoulders down a fraction. “And a plate, if your kitchen has anything left. I need a bed.” He set his pack down with a soft thump and slid a small coin forward, not generous enough to be silly, not stingy enough to insult.

“We have stew and bread.” The innkeeper palmed the coin, made it vanish, and poured a dark ale into a mug with a practiced tilt. “Bed, we can do. Merchant, is it?”

“Bit of everything,” Kael said. He allowed a hint of a smile, a man used to haggling, not unfriendly. He nodded toward the wrapped bundle. “Cloth from the lowlands, iron nails forged clean, a handful of dyes if anyone here likes their weaving to be more than honest brown.”

“You’re late for the market,” the innkeeper said, setting the mug down. “But late coin spends.” He turned his head. “Mara! Stew for the traveler.”

A girl popped up from a back doorway, wiped her hands, and disappeared again. Kael took a pull of the ale and let his gaze wander the room with the lazy carelessness of a stranger. Small details caught and stuck. A farmer rubbing at his knuckles as if they hurt worse today than they did yesterday. A pair of youths with dust on their boots at this hour, so they’d been out past dark. A woman in a shawl listening too hard to nothing. His medallion kept its gentle warmth. He rested an elbow on the bar.

“Quiet place,” he said, low enough that it didn’t travel beyond the man in front of him.

“We like it that way,” the innkeeper said. “Silverwood doesn’t mind being small.”

“I’ve slept in small places that sat wrong.” Kael kept his eyes on the foam gathering at the edge of the mug. “Wind that you feel inside, you know it’s wrong even when the air is still. Came through a stand of birch two days ago that looked…tired. Leaves gone pale. Not weather. I don’t pretend to know the work of it, just felt odd. Figured I’d ask, before I unroll my blanket—any trouble here I should make plans around? Sick cattle, old ghosts, boys with knives they should keep sheathed?” He let the last be lightly said, as if he expected only a shrug and a joke in return.

The innkeeper’s polishing slowed for a half-count before he shrugged one shoulder. “Cattle do what cattle do. Ghosts aren’t my business.” He smiled that bar-keep smile again and leaned a hip against the counter. “Night watch says the ridge is clear. You saw any trouble on your way in?”

“Only a fox that had more patience than the man with the snare,” Kael said. “And the birches. Maybe I’ve been on the road too long. Makes you imagine things.” He let the idea hang and drew the mug toward him again. “What about the woods yonder? Whisperwood, someone called it when I asked. I stay out of trees that have reputations, if I can help it.”

“That’s just a name,” the innkeeper said, a touch too quick, then softened it. “Old stories to keep children from wandering. Woods are woods. If you get lost, you get lost. Stay to the paths, and the paths stay to you.”

Mara came with a bowl balanced in both hands, steam winding up from thick stew. She set it down with a quiet thud. “Room’s ready,” she said, glancing at the sword and away. “Up the stairs, second on the left. Water in the ewer.”

Kael nodded his thanks and slid another coin across—a small one, touching the edge of generosity to see if it loosened tongues. The innkeeper’s fingers covered it, then tapped it once without looking, an absent movement of thought.

“You’ve got the look of a man who listens to things most folks don’t hear,” Kael said, breaking bread and using the motion to make the line casual. “I like that in a host. I also like knowing if there’s anything that’ll bite me in my sleep that isn’t a flea. Whisper to a traveler if you’ve had odd…happenings. I can reroute my business.”

At the other end of the bar, a stool creaked. The man on it said, “Odd enough that the healer’s had more visitors. Kids take fever then shake it quick. Weather’s been off. Nothing to drive you out.” He scowled at his drink as if it had detracted from his point by existing.

“Hush, Bran,” the innkeeper said without sharpness. To Kael, he added, “He means the turn of the season has been jumpy. We’ve had warm days and a couple cold nights. Makes joints sing. He’s not wrong about the healer; she’s been busy. Seasonal.”

Kael dipped his spoon and let himself eat like a man who’d walked and earned it. He nodded. “Seasonal I can handle.” He glanced toward the door as if thinking about the road he’d just left. “No travelers ahead of me mentioned anything else. No strangers besides me, then?”

“Traders here and there.” The innkeeper leaned, using the cloth to wipe a ring of ale he’d long since taken note of. “A tinker came through last week with a cart of pans. A pair of sisters driving geese yesterday. You’re the only one with a blade like that strapped on like it means something.”

“It means I’ve had my share of boys with knives,” Kael said, low, the humor gone for a heartbeat, the truth of it touching his eyes and then being tucked away. “I won’t cause trouble.” He set his spoon down. “If trouble’s already come here, it’d be good to know. Birches pale. Kids fever. Weather wrong. If I see anything as I head toward the next town, I can pass a message back. I owe a few favors that count for warnings.”

The innkeeper studied him openly for the first time, weighing something. He took his time, then nodded as if he had balanced the scale. “If you’re just passing through, pass through quietly.” He lowered his voice. “Some folk say they’ve had…strange dreams. The sort you wake from and the light looks different for a moment. That’s just talk. It will be better when the harvest is in and the work occupies hands.”

Strange dreams. Light wrong for a breath. Kael’s heartbeat stayed slow. He gave nothing away.

“Then I’ll sleep,” he said. He lifted the mug again, drained half. “If I need anything, I’ll ask in the morning. Thank you.”

“Second on the left,” the innkeeper said again, a final note.

Kael gathered the bowl and the bread and his bundle, weighting himself as any tired merchant would, and climbed the stairs. The wood underfoot spoke in small whispers. At the landing, he paused where no one could see him, eyes closing. The medallion pulsed against his sternum once, like the tap of a finger. He let the sensation sink in. Downstairs, a laugh burst and died. He opened his eyes and went to the door Mara had indicated, slid the latch, and set his pack down softly.

He ate standing by the window, looking over the square. He counted his breaths and the slow beats beneath the world until they matched. He listened for the seam. It was there, faint. It would be louder tomorrow. He set his back to the wall and let himself be still. He had a roof. He had a measure of the room. Morning would ask the next questions. Tonight, he would sleep among them.

Dawn came thin and gray, a veil lifting slow from the eaves. Kael rose before the inn began to stir, washed in cold water that woke every tendon in his hands, and dressed in the practical order of habit. Pack light. Blade wrapped. Merchant’s mask in place. The medallion lay cool as a coin against his chest. No flare, just a steady presence, like breath you only noticed when you looked for it.

The market gathered itself while the mist still held to the square’s edges. Stalls unfolded like simple tricks. Canvas raised. Baskets set out with the soft thud of produce. A woman shook onions onto a plank. Someone laughed at a joke not meant to carry. Chickens complained in their wicker prisons. It was the kind of morning that could lull a man into believing the world was made of small, harmless things.

He walked slow, as if he’d slept too well and was in no hurry to catch up to himself. He nodded when nods were expected and let his gaze skim as if counting wares. In truth he counted rhythm. He measured footsteps, the cadence of speech, any wrongness that set itself against the ordinary.

Magic was quiet here. The village’s aura lay low, like a field after harvest. Occasional pulses moved through it—little utilities that mended a tear in a rope or freshened milk. Nothing that would have tugged at him from a mile off.

He paused at a stall of dyed cloth to let a knot of boys run past, all elbows and shouts, and that was when he heard the braid of argument and laughter from the grain seller’s awning. He turned his head with the casualness of a man following a noise that promised a story.

She stood with her hands on a basket like she might keep it from floating away. Brown hair pulled back in a simple tail, a few strands freed by the damp to frame a face made more interesting by its sincerity than by symmetry. Her clothes were plain, mended in places by a neat, steady hand. She spoke with focus sharpened by need, chin lifted stubbornly though her voice stayed respectful.

“You know I can’t pay that and still put bread on our table,” she said to the grain merchant, a man with a belly like a good ale barrel and fingers that drummed his ledger with undisguised impatience. “Last week you charged three coppers less by the measure.”

“Last week, I had more stock,” he shot back. “This rain—”

“This rain didn’t touch the north stores, and that’s where you get most of yours. I saw your boy driving a cart in from that road this morning.” The slightest smile touched her mouth, not mocking, just sure of her ground. “You can try to sell me weather and scarcity, Bren, but you shouldn’t do it to your neighbor.”

She had the stance of someone who’d stood her ground before because she had to, not because she enjoyed the clash. Kael let his eyes soften, the way men did when they took in a pretty woman, but he watched the air around her. There was a pattern, so faint he might have missed it if not for the medallion’s minimal hum—an almost-imagined shimmer at the edges, like heat above a stone road in summer. It didn’t bend the world. It barely touched it. A flicker, then gone.

He stepped closer, not enough to intrude. The grain merchant huffed, weighed the market with a glance, and knocked a coin off his asking under the pressure of the girl’s logic and the attention of those nearby.

“Four coppers less,” the merchant said. “And that’s a kindness.”

“One,” she countered, eyebrow tilting as if she allowed the dance to matter less than the result.

“Three.”

“Two. And I’ll send Finn to help you unload that cart you think no one saw.”

At the name, the merchant’s eyes softened. He looked at her like a man who had watched her grow up, then sighed as if this was the ritual that kept his morning straight. “Two,” he grumbled. “But tell your brother to mind his back. Those sacks aren’t feathers.”

“I will,” she said, and the smile this time was unguarded, warm enough that Kael felt it like a small heat. She counted out coins with care, every movement precise, and slid them across. The merchant made a show of grumbling but his gaze was fond.

Kael watched the shimmer again, searching for a seam or a pulse hidden under the ordinary. He felt nothing but a whisper that could have been his own expectation. Close, near her hands when she lifted the first small sack into her basket, the air tugged once like a thread being adjusted. He tilted his head, let the medallion sit, silent as a held breath. If he reached with the Guardian’s sense, he could catch rough edges most men never felt. He reached. The edges around her were too smooth for danger, too soft for harm. He almost smiled at himself. Ghost chasing. He’d passed a dozen girls with glints of talent that never grew, little sparks that warmed and went out.

She adjusted the strap over her shoulder and almost lost the balance of the load. Kael took one step—and stopped. She caught it herself with a quick shift of weight that was more instinct than grace. He watched the people around her. None stared. No one was drawn as if a flare had gone off. Minimally talented, if at all. Perhaps a herbalist who could coax a plant a day faster, he thought, nothing more.

“Need a hand?” he asked, because a merchant would, because it was a chance to see her up close without the alertness that came when a stranger loomed too large.

She turned, startled, then recovered with a nod of thanks and a quick assessment of the blade on his back, the pack, the face of a man passing through. Her eyes were a clear, changeable hazel, the kind that took color from the world. “I’ve got it,” she said, breath a little fast from the strain. “But thank you.”

“Where are you taking it?” he asked, as if offering to carry didn’t mean prying. He made his voice easy. “My back is already sore. A favor for a favor—tell me which baker won’t water his rye.”

She blinked, the corners of her mouth tugging. “There’s only one who tries that and he stopped after we all told his wife.” She shifted the basket higher. “I’m two streets over. It’s not far.”

“I can see two streets over without the burden,” he said, and put a hand to the rim of the basket before he could talk himself out of it, lifting without strain and setting the weight on his hip the way he’d carried worse in other landscapes. The muscles along his side registered the familiarity and filed it under things that made him seem harmless.

She looked at him again, this time with a brief flare of gratitude that wasn’t performative. “Thank you.” She wiped a stray hair back with the back of her wrist. Her sleeve had been patched twice, both times with a careful hand that matched thread to weave so well you had to be looking to see it.

They moved through the square. He kept pace half a step behind, giving her room to lead. People greeted her by name. Elara, they said. Morning, Elara. He stored it without letting it echo against the faint shiver he’d felt. The medallion lay inert.

She glanced up at him once. “You’re not from here,” she said, not unkind. “You’d have refused to carry anything that puts you between Bren and his count if you were.”

“I was careful to let him see,” Kael said, amused. “Those who count for a living don’t like ghosts in their totals.” He took in the turn of her wrist as she pointed to a stall of herbs, the care with which she didn’t brush past a tray of seedlings. Small kindnesses, practiced without thinking. “Do you have a garden?”

“The Whisperwood,” she said, then added quickly, “and a little plot behind our house. The wood gives more, if you know where to look and when to ask.”

Ask. The word pricked him. He nodded as if he understood in the way villagers meant. “And the wood answers?”

“Sometimes,” she said, and her gaze went distant for half a heartbeat, then sharpened again on the path. “This way.”

They passed under a string of drying fish and turned down a narrow lane. An old woman sweeping her stoop paused and said, “Tell your mother I have the jar she wanted.”

“I will, Hessa,” Elara called, then to Kael, quieter, as if sharing a simple truth: “Silverwood is small. Everyone knows everything. It keeps us honest.”

“And safe,” he offered, wanting to see if she flinched at the word the way some people did when they were brave enough to know better.

She didn’t. “Mostly.”

He set the basket down at the indicated door, a clean wooden step, a curtain stirring with the breath of the house. He let go of the handle last, fingers measuring any ripple her proximity might breed. He felt her then, a little pulse at the edge of sense like a heartbeat you feel only when you press your ear to a chest. Alive, inconsequential. He released it without show.

“Thank you,” she said again. Up close, there was a surface tension to her composure, as if it were water stretched thin over something deeper—worry, maybe, or lack of sleep. But that was common enough in a village at harvest’s edge.

“Fair price,” he said, nodding toward the market as if that had been his morning’s concern. “You argued well.”

“I argue because I must,” she said simply. “If I don’t, we go hungry.”

He inclined his head. “Luck with the rest of your errands,” he said, and stepped back because a stranger lingering on a doorstep drew attention he didn’t need. She smiled once more and disappeared inside with soft footfalls.

Kael walked back into the flow of the square and found a stall with a line of hand-forged nails. He haggled for the appearance and left a coin for the relationship. He passed a child chasing a dog and a pair of men debating rainfall as if it would listen. The medallion’s cool weight didn’t change. He breathed into it, testing for a drag or a tug. Nothing. He glanced once toward the lane where the girl had gone. Elara. The shimmer he’d seen could have been the wake of any small gift. It wasn’t the anomaly that had brought him down from the ridge. It wasn’t enough to explain birches turned old overnight.

He turned the face he wore toward the blacksmith’s tent and let himself be a merchant again. The market poured around him, ordinary as bread. Somewhere beyond this square, the seam widened. He would find it. He put the girl away in the same place he put other almosts and moved on.

The afternoon had ripened into that hour where sun and voices settle into a tired harmony. Kael let the marketplace hold him, measuring his path and her routine. He saw her again by the fruit sellers—hair caught in a simple braid, a stray curl sticking to her cheek from the heat, fingers assessing each apple with the decisiveness of someone who couldn’t afford rot beneath a bright skin.

He approached at an angle that made sense for a man drifting between stalls, eyes ostensibly on a rack of knives. He slowed, adjusted, then cut left just as she lifted her basket against her hip. The jostle was feather-light, calculated to be nothing more than an inconvenience. The effect was a bright, ridiculous cascade.

Apples hit the ground with soft thuds and dull rolls, scattering underfoot. Elara inhaled sharply, a small sound of frustration swallowed as fast as it rose.

“I’m sorry,” Kael said, already crouching. He kept his tone mild, contrite. “I didn’t see you.”

“It’s all right,” she said, even though it wasn’t. Her cheeks colored as she chased a runaway apple before it lodged beneath a stall. “That was my fault. I shouldn’t have stacked them so high.” She reached for another and their hands met over the same red skin.

The jolt that hit him was clean and startling, a crackle that ran up his palm into his forearm and sank into his chest like a quick, cold breath. Not pain, but awareness, as if a string inside him had been plucked. The medallion lay flat against his sternum, and for a fraction of a second it felt warmer. He didn’t look at it. He kept his gaze on her fingers, smaller than his, the nails clean but rimmed with the faint green of a day spent with plants.

Elara snatched her hand back, mortified. “Sorry,” she said again, voice low. She didn’t rub her fingers as if she felt anything unusual; she simply reached for another apple, concentrating as if the fruit were listening. “I should have tied the basket. Bren will give me the worst ones next time if he sees this.”

“He’ll give you the same,” Kael said, capturing an apple that wobbled toward the gutter. He passed it to her, letting their fingers avoid contact this time. “You make him honest, remember?”

She shot him a quick look, surprised that he remembered the earlier exchange. It softened into a grateful half-smile, but her embarrassment didn’t let it linger. She scooped apples with careful hands, testing for bruises out of habit, though bruising could be hidden until cut. He watched her movements, quick and efficient, the way her mouth pressed at one corner when she focused.

They worked in a rhythm: his reach further under a table for the escapes, her smaller hand slipping between crate legs. A child darted in, grabbed a rolling apple with a triumphant squeak, and plopped it back in the basket as if solving a great problem. Elara thanked her, warmed at once by the small kindness. The girl’s mother tugged her along with a smile for Elara that said shared mornings and borrowed cups of sugar.

“You don’t have to—” Elara began, but Kael had already set another apple into the basket and shifted positions so his knee blocked traffic.

“I owe you at least this,” he said. “And the apples.”

Her mouth quirked. “You didn’t knock over the farmer,” she said, glancing at the seller, who pretended not to watch while watching closely. “So you don’t owe him anything.”

Kael brushed a bit of dust from the smooth skin of a fruit before passing it over. He let his hand graze the rim of the basket in a way that might register a second spark. Nothing. Whatever he had felt was gone. The medallion cooled as if nothing had happened. His body, though, remembered. A sensitivity sharpened in him, subtle and unwelcome. He catalogued it and put it aside for later.

“You must hate the market when it’s crowded,” he said, filling the space with harmless words. Her braid slid forward across her shoulder as she bent, and he saw the line of her neck, pale where the sun hadn’t touched.

“I don’t mind it,” she said, breathless from quick movement. “At least here I can count what we have.” She looked up then, and for a flicker of an instant the sheen he had chased at the grain stall shivered around her again like heat above a candle. She blinked, and it vanished. If she felt anything, she didn’t show it. “It’s the waiting I hate. For harvest. For the first frost. For what might happen.”

He handed her the last apple. Their hands didn’t touch this time. He wished he could say it was by chance. “Waiting is a profession in some places,” he said.

“Is that where you’re from?” she asked, the question falling out before she could stop it. She flushed again, the color riding high. “I mean—never mind.”

“From a place where waiting can keep you alive,” he replied, and that was true enough. He gestured to the basket. “May I help you stand?”

She started to refuse and then accepted with a nod. He offered his forearm rather than his hand, a compromise. She gripped it, strong despite the slenderness of her fingers. He felt the press of her tendons, the fine bones beneath skin, the warmth of her palm through the fabric of his sleeve. No jolt, only human heat. He lifted, and she rose with the basket hugged to her chest.

“Thank you,” she said, not quite meeting his eyes. The embarrassment still clung to her, but there was a thread of humor now. “If I drop them again, I’ll pretend I meant to test for soundness.”

“You’ll have to teach me that test,” he said. He let a small smile touch his mouth, just enough to disarm. “I only know how to judge a blade.”

Elara’s gaze flicked to the sword hilt peeking over his shoulder. She didn’t ask. Her restraint told him as much as any probing would have: she had questions, but she knew when to keep them. “Well,” she said, exhaling. “Now I’ve got to get these home before they bruise. Thank you. Again.”

He inclined his head. “My fault,” he said lightly, owning what wasn’t just because it made things smooth. He stood aside to give her room.

She shifted the basket, finding the balance, the muscles in her forearms tightening. “I’ll see you around, merchant,” she said, the last word almost teasing, as if testing it.

“Likely,” he answered.

She turned into the slow flow of the lane, disappearing in the sift of bodies and color, the braid swinging against her back. Kael remained a moment, his palm tingling faintly as if remembering. He flexed his fingers once, then twice, impatience checked by discipline. Noise rose and fell around him, the ordinary fortunately loud. He breathed in spice and sweat and sun-warmed wood and stepped back into the market, one more man with nowhere particular to go and too much time to get there.

He left the square through the west path that trimmed along the stream and then curved toward the Whisperwood. The chatter faded to a murmur, then to the hush of leaves and insect hum. Birds kept singing, the ordinary cadence of late afternoon, but under it was a tension he had learned to hear. The medallion stayed cool and mute against his sternum. He slid his thumb over its face anyway, a habit more than a use.

The track narrowed, tufts of grass giving way to packed earth and the scuff of deer. He stepped off the path when the trees grew denser, placing his boots where the ground made sense, avoiding moss that would slip and roots that would complain. He let stillness seep into him the way it did on stakeouts and watches. His attention widened, taking in the way light sifted through the canopy, the smell of damp bark and last year’s leaves, the precise angle of spider silk spanning a stump.

A hundred paces in, he felt it. Not through the medallion, but along the back of his neck. The air held a chill that didn’t belong in the soft warmth of afternoon. He inhaled. The scent thinned, losing the layered green of growing things. He slowed, then stopped between two birches, their pale trunks unmarred. To his left, a patch of ground wore a wrong color.

He moved toward it the way you move toward a wounded animal—steady, unthreatening, sure of what you might have to do.

At first it could have been shadow. Then his eyes adjusted, and he saw the truth. A circle the size of a cottage lay muted, all bright green bleached to an old gray. Ferns that should have been glossy curled in on themselves, their edges brittle and dented. A sapling that had been a season from strong, its bark tight and smooth, now bore the fissured, flaking skin of age. When he brushed a fingertip against a leaf, it didn’t bend. It crumbled, soft as ash, leaving a smear of powder on his skin.

Beyond the circle, a cluster of mushrooms—brown caps with white gills—stood in a ring. On the far side, the same species had dissolved into papery discs pressed flat against the soil, as if they had risen, spread, dried, and died in the span of a breath. He crouched, eyes tracing patterns. The shift hadn’t hit evenly. It had skittered, dragged, pulled at some things and let others go untouched. A strand of ivy climbed a rock, fresh and slick with life until it reached the boundary; there it became chalk, snapped in three places under its own weight and sloughed to dust.

He held his hand above the center. The temperature dropped. Nothing moved. Even the gnats that had clouded the trail behind him avoided the place, their bodies describing a neat arc around it. He touched the medallion again, seeking the cues engraved in metal and memory. It gave him nothing more than a sober silence. Whatever had done this wasn’t just old magic leaking. It had intention. It had direction. It had a heartbeat he couldn’t hear yet.

He straightened and paced the outer edge, counting off lengths, measuring with the line of his stride. One, two, three—seven strides across at its widest. Oval, not round. His boot scuffed the boundary where healthy meadow grass met the leached soil, and the blade under his heel broke, fraying to dust like hair burned too close to a flame.

He knelt at a pine sapling, palm to the ground at the margin. The earth held the memory of heat, but it wasn’t fire. It was the heat of work, of cells running too fast for too long, of years forced into minutes. It made his teeth ache. He inhaled once more and tasted the bitter edge of sap gone sour.

There were tracks—a hare’s hop pattern, a fox print, a child’s small heel mark pressed deep where the soil had been damp. The animal prints skirted the dead patch in a wide bow. The heel mark did too, close enough to show curiosity and prudence. He pictured a child standing where he stood, peering in, sensing wrongness without knowing its name, then turning back toward the village. Good instincts. He hoped they belonged to someone with a parent who listened.

His mind slotted this scene into others. He had seen sudden winter on a summer meadow, seen a man’s black hair turn white in the span of an argument, seen a wall erode under a hand in the space of a prayer. All of those had been aftermaths. This felt like a pulse. The source was close. Closer than the ridge, closer than the stream.

He thought of the apple hitting his palm and the clean jolt that had arced up his arm. He thought of Elara’s fingers, steady despite embarrassment. The faint shimmer that had come and gone around her like heat. He had dismissed it as noise because he’d wanted to. It made the village simpler. It made the job straightforward. It let him be the blade and not the hand that held it.

He stepped back from the dead patch and let his gaze lift, past the tangle of branches to the distant tilt of roofs he could see through the trees where the land dipped—a sliver of thatch, the plumes of cook-fire smoke, the suggestion of people moving along their routines. The normal pulse of a place that believed in tomorrow because it had always arrived.

His jaw set. The muscles along his forearms tightened, the scars there a pale map of other bad choices and late arrivals. The medallion caught a weak thread then, as if finally deciding to speak, a tremor like a plucked wire running from the metal into his chest. He closed his fingers around it and held.

The threat was not a rumor on a ridge. It was breathing in the same air as that square, that inn, that girl with a basket and a braid. It knew how to touch and leave no mark and then take everything in a single, precise sweep. He could not afford doubt. He could not afford almosts.

Kael took one last slow survey of the oval, memorizing it from the bend of the ivy to the crack in the sapling’s bark. He would report it to the part of himself that wrote in disciplined lines later. For now, he turned toward the break in the trees that led back. He moved faster, the pace of a man who understood the distance between a heartbeat and a disaster. When he reached the edge of the wood and the light opened, he looked back over his shoulder, not at the path, but at the village. His gaze hardened into resolve that gave no room to gentleness, only to the necessities that came next.