Addy Tinklebottom hovered above the moss bridge at dawn, her dried leaf wings ticking like paper in the wind, and admitted to no one that she had spent three days looking for a place to save and had not found it. Her periwinkle buns were coming loose. Her pockets were full of pixie dust she could not spend. She had told the Wylds she would restore a withered corner of them, and the Wylds, in return, had shown her nothing but healthy green. The truth she kept swallowing was simpler and worse. Her heart pulled toward the meadow beyond the far ridge, where she used to visit before duty rooted her here. She knew the pull. She overrode it. Roots first. Always roots first. The bridge guardian, Thornwick Rootshield, watched her circle. Blue moss crusted his shoulders. His hammer's head rested in the dirt. He did not speak for a long while. "The river shows its wound only to those who stop looking upstream," he said at last. "That's not an answer," Addy said. "No." A cackle broke from the reeds. Terry the Terror Bird stepped out, wizard hat crooked, beak clacking. He tapped a claw against the bridge stone. "Little pixie," he said. "Lost, are we. I ate a pixie once. Didn't. But I could have." He tilted his head. "There's a dead patch past the ribbon pole. Saw it yesterday. Or last century. Time's slippery when you're mostly legs." Addy did not trust him. She flew that way anyway. The ribbon pole stood in a clearing, its colors limp in the still air. Beyond it, the ground changed. Grass gave out. Bark peeled from a small tree in gray strips. Its branches, once pink and heart-shaped, hung colorless and brittle. A stone statue leaned nearby — a giant with his hand out to a small dragon, both weathered pale. The bond in the stone looked like it had gone cold with the ground. Addy landed. She pressed her palm to the dead earth. It was cold in the wrong way, not winter-cold but absence-cold. Then a voice behind her, sweet as spoiled fruit. "Oh, darling. You found my favorite little grave." Addy turned. Rhommie Gigglebottom perched on the statue's outstretched hand, white hair catching light, brown leaf wings folded neat. Addy's stomach dropped. She knew this pixie. Everyone knew this pixie, and what she did with what she learned. "You're not helping me," Addy said. "I'm watching, sweetness." Rhommie's smile widened. "I do so love watching a girl work with her hands full of somewhere else." Addy's jaw tightened. But she had her target. The withered corner was under her palm. She poured a thread of dust into the ground. A single pink bud pushed up between her fingers, small and stubborn. It was enough to prove the magic would land. It was also enough for Rhommie to have seen exactly where Addy's heart pulled when the magic left her hand.

The pink bud held for one breath. Then its edges curled brown and it sank back into the cold dirt. Addy stared at the empty spot where her magic had died. She poured a second thread of dust. Another bud rose, trembled, and failed the same way. Rhommie laughed from the statue's stone hand. "Oh, sweetness. Watch that little heart of yours flicker." She twirled a finger. "Your magic climbs, then remembers it wants to be somewhere else. And down it falls. Every single time." Addy said nothing. She knew the pixie was right, and she hated that. Her dust was strong. Her aim was true. But her focus split each time, pulled toward the meadow past the far ridge. She had felt it since the first bud. The magic bloomed only as far as her heart would follow it. "You can't finish what you won't want," Rhommie said. She leaned forward, delighted. "So which is it, dear? The forest that holds you, or the field that calls you? Choose, or watch every flower rot in your hands." Addy looked at the dead ground. Then at the withered tree beside it, its heart-shaped branches gray and brittle. She thought of the meadow. She had wanted it for years. She had told herself roots came first, and she had swallowed the pull until it choked her. But the pull was not the problem. The lie was. She had been forcing dust into this earth while pretending she felt nothing. The magic knew the truth even when she would not say it. So she said it. "My heart's not here," Addy said. "It's over the ridge. It always has been." Her voice shook. "I planted myself in the wrong place. That's the whole embarrassing truth." Rhommie's smile thinned. This was not the squirming she had come to watch. "But I'm here now," Addy went on. "And this corner needs me. I can want the meadow and still do this. I don't have to choose one root and kill the other." She pressed both palms to the dirt. She let the pull stay. She stopped fighting it. Dust flowed from her hands, steady this time, no longer split against itself. A stem shot up. It thickened, budded, and opened into a broad flower. The petals ran from misted purple to deep gray, then softened to sage at the fringes. It did not curl. It did not fall. Around it, green crept back into the dead grass. Rhommie rose off the statue's hand, wings ticking. "Well," she said, no endearment now. "You spoiled my afternoon." She flew off toward the ribbon pole. Addy sat back on her heels. Her magic held because she had stopped lying. But the meadow still called, louder now that she had named it aloud. She had settled the wavering. She had not settled where she belonged.