Aldric Fenn traced a symbol in the dust and forgot its name. He had drawn it ten thousand times. It unlocked the third gate of his craft, a secret no living scholar shared. Now it meant nothing. He pressed his cracked knuckles to the floor and breathed. The bark had climbed past his collar. Grey plates ridged the side of his neck, hard and cold. When they reached his skull, the moss on his antlers would take his mind, and every spell in his ruined books would die with him. He needed a student. That was the whole trouble. For forty years he had guarded his knowledge and taught no one. Pride, then fear, then habit. Now his own body counted down the days, and he had no one to pour himself into. So he called for help the only way left to him. He crushed dried petals in a bowl, spoke the summoning, and waited. Something small dropped through the smoke-hole and landed on his table. A sprite crouched there, no taller than his hand. A brown acorn cap sat over its ears like a helmet. Green vines curled up its bare arms and legs. It planted its feet, leaned back, and studied him with sharp eyes. "You're the bark man," the sprite said. "The forest talks about you. Says you're turning into a tree and screaming about it." Aldric ignored the insult. "I need to find a person. A pupil. Someone who can learn what I know before I lose it." He tapped his temple. His finger struck a patch of bark he did not remember growing there. The sprite hopped closer and peered at his neck. "That's bad. That's real bad." It tilted its head. "I can find you a student. I know every child and beggar and thief for miles. But you'll owe me." "Owe you what?" "A story I don't know yet." The sprite grinned. "I collect them. You've got a hundred locked in your head. When I bring you your pupil, you give me one." Aldric hesitated. Each spell he still held was worth more than gold, and the bark was eating them one by one. But he could not search the roads himself. His legs barely carried him across the room. "Agreed," he said. The sprite spat on its palm and slapped his thumb. "Then rest, bark man. I'll be back before you forget my face." It sprang to the smoke-hole and vanished. Aldric sat in the quiet. His hand drifted to the dust symbol. He tried once more to name it. Nothing came. The gap where the word had lived felt smooth and final, like sanded wood. He closed the book and did not open it again that night. A stranger would soon arrive at his door, sent by a creature he could not control. And Aldric would have to decide, fast, whether that stranger was worth the last true thoughts he owned.

The knock came before dawn. Aldric dragged himself to the door and opened it. A girl stood there, thin and mud-splashed, a satchel of books hugged to her chest. The sprite perched on her shoulder, grinning. "Brought you your pupil, bark man," it said. "Found her sleeping in that old timber schoolhouse in the woods, copying letters by candle stub. Hungry for lore, this one." The girl said nothing. She only stared at his antlers and his cracking neck. "Come in," Aldric said. His voice rasped. He needed to know one thing fast. Not whether she was clever. Whether her mind could hold his kind of knowledge without breaking. Many bright people learned facts. Few could carry the deep grammar of his craft. He had no gentle way to test it. So he chose the hard way. He pulled a weathered stone tablet from beneath a heap of cloth. Riddle-marks scored its face, cut deep by hands long dead. "Read this aloud," he said. "Then tell me what it wants." The girl set down her satchel. She traced the grooves with one finger. Her lips moved. The sprite went quiet for once. The tablet did not speak plainly. Its riddles bit back at weak minds. Aldric had watched a grown scholar weep at it years ago, unable to hold the shape of the words. He waited. His own thoughts felt slippery this morning. A word for the stone slid away from him, and he did not chase it. The girl frowned. She read the first lines, then stopped. "These aren't separate riddles," she said. "Each answer is the next riddle's first word. It's a chain." She spoke faster now. "The last line asks for the first answer again. It loops." She looked up. "Whoever cut this wanted a reader who could hold the whole thing in her head at once." Aldric's chest tightened. That was it exactly. Not the answers. The holding. Most people read line by line and lost the thread. She had seen the shape. He steadied himself against the table. "Yes," he said. "You can hold it." His relief was so sharp it frightened him. The sprite hopped onto the tablet. "So she passes? Good. Then you teach her, and I'll want my story." It rubbed its small hands together. Aldric barely heard it. He was already reaching for a glass bottle on the shelf, the one holding faerie tears that slowed the bark. There was little left. His mind was worthy of pouring now, and he had found the vessel. But a new fear pressed in. He had months of teaching to give her. He glanced at his cracking knuckles, then at the bottle. He did not have months. He had days, and one small bottle of borrowed time. "Sit," he told the girl. "We start now. There is no slow way left."

Aldric told the girl to sit, but she swayed on the bench instead. Her hands shook. Her eyes drifted from the tablet to nothing. He had planned to teach at once. Now he saw the truth. She had walked far from that abandoned schoolhouse with nothing in her stomach. A starving mind could not hold his craft. First he had to feed her. He pushed himself up. His knees cracked like green wood. The larder held only a crust and a shriveled root. Not enough. He needed a real meal, and quickly. The old inn stood within walking reach, warm and stocked. But he had no coin, and his cracked hands could not carry a full pot back before the bark stiffened them. "Sprite," he rasped. The little creature dropped from a rafter and landed on the table. His acorn cap tipped forward over one green eye. "Still here, bark man. Still owed a story." He crossed his thin arms. "You want another favor? Favors cost." "The girl faints," Aldric said. "I cannot teach a body this weak. Fetch food from the inn. Bread, broth, whatever they'll spare." The sprite eyed the girl. She had slumped against the wall. Even his grin faded. "Innkeepers don't hand meals to a leaf like me." "Then bargain," Aldric said. "You know how. Trade a story for a pot of stew." He gripped the shelf and reached down the glass bottle of faerie tears. It glowed faint in his palm. Little was left. He measured one drop with his eyes, then let a single tear fall onto the girl's cracked lips. Her breathing steadied. "That buys her an hour. Use it." The sprite snatched a small carving from the shelf, a willow shaped from dark ironwood, its leaves painted green and gold. "Trade this too. Innkeeper likes pretty things." He didn't wait for an answer. He darted through the gap under the door. Aldric waited. He counted the girl's breaths to stay awake himself. His own thoughts kept slipping. A word for stew left him and did not return. He did not chase it. The door rattled. The sprite squeezed back through, dragging a covered clay pot nearly his own size. Steam leaked from the lid. "Barley and mutton," he panted. "Told the innkeeper a tale of a drowned king. He wept. Kept the willow too." Aldric ladled broth into a bowl. He held it to the girl's mouth. She swallowed, then drank on her own. Color returned to her face. She ate the barley with both hands. When the bowl was empty she looked up, clear-eyed now, and steady. "Now," she said, "you were going to teach me." Aldric set down the bowl. The bottle on the shelf held one drop less. His days were fewer than the tears. But the vessel was fed and awake, and he could pour into her at last.