Aldric Thornwood knelt at the crossroads and pressed his palm to the dirt. Three trails split into the tangled glades. His sister had four days of breath left, maybe five. The seer in the poisoned grove had told him where to go — Melody Lake, a full jar of its water, three nights at his sister's bed without leaving. She had also shown him her blackened fingertip and warned that the wrong water would do worse than nothing. His wolf circled once and sat, waiting for him to choose. He could not choose. He did not know these woods. He stood and walked the middle trail because it looked worn. An hour in, the path forked again. Then again. The trees leaned close and the moss looked the same in every direction. He turned back before he lost the light and made himself go into the nearest cottage smoke he could find. The cottage door was open. A red-haired woman in glasses sat at a low table, grinding pigment. Moonflowers dried on a string above her head. She looked up once, took him in, and went back to her mortar. "I need the way to Melody Lake," Aldric said. "My sister is dying. I have four days." "Middle trail kills you," she said. "Sinkholes. Left trail loops. Right trail is longer." "How much longer." "Six days on foot." She set the pestle down. "You don't have six days." He put his hand on the doorframe to keep himself standing. The wolf pressed against his knee. She watched him a moment. Then she stood, crossed to a shelf, and pulled down a folded green thing no bigger than a napkin. She shook it once and it unfolded into a leaf-shaped sail on a slim hull. A small caterpillar in a striped cap blinked awake at the wheel and puffed smoke from a tiny pipe. "Skiff goes by water," she said. "Creek behind the cottage runs to the lake. One night, not six days. He steers. Don't touch the wheel." "Why give me this." She pushed her glasses up. "You said dying." She turned back to her table. "Bring the skiff back when you can. Or don't." Aldric carried the skiff to the creek. The wolf leapt in first. The caterpillar tipped its cap and eased the sail into the current. The water took them fast, faster than any road, and the trees blurred past on both sides. He unstoppered the empty jar at his belt and held it against his chest. He knew the way now. He had the vessel to travel it. What he did not have was any idea how he would carry a full jar of Melody Lake water back through country where a red-haired woman had recognized his need in one glance — and where, the seer had warned him, the wrong water poisoned the hand that touched it.

The skiff moved through the dark water while Aldric turned the empty jar in his hands. Clay. Thin-walled. The seer's blackened fingertip came back to him. If the lake water ate through skin, it would eat through this jar before the wolf's tail dried. He needed a vessel that would hold the poison without leaking, without cracking, without touching him. He had none. The caterpillar puffed smoke and steered on. The skiff nosed against a bank where lantern light spilled from a shed above the water. A kiln vented heat into the night. The red-haired woman from the cottage stood at a wheel inside, hands wet, and did not look surprised to see him twice in one evening. A blond man in a pale coat crouched by the kiln door, feeding it wood. A dragonfly with rainbow wings rested on his shoulder. "You came back early," she said. "Or you never left." "I need a jar that won't break from what I'm carrying." Aldric held up the clay pot. "The lake water is poisoned. This won't hold it." She set down her tool. "No. It won't." The blond man stood. He wiped ash on his trousers and looked at the jar, then at Aldric. "Melody Lake?" "Yes." "Then you want double-fired stoneware, glazed inside with the ash slip." He said it plainly, then shrugged. "My mentor made me learn pottery. Long story." The woman was already at her shelf. She pulled down a squat gray jar with a heavy stopper. "Made this last month. Held quicksilver for a week without weeping." "Fire it again," the prince said. "Now. Hotter. He needs it to hold something worse than quicksilver." She looked at him. He met her eyes and did not move. She nodded once and carried the jar to the kiln. The prince fed the fire while she worked the bellows. The dragonfly lifted off his shoulder and circled the shed, then landed on the jar's stopper and stayed there. "Zyl likes it," the prince said. "Zyl doesn't like much." Aldric watched the jar glow red, then white, then red again as it cooled on the rack. The wolf pressed against his knee, then eased off. No danger here. The woman wrapped the jar in wet cloth and handed it over. It was warm through the wrap. Heavier than his old one. "Stopper's beeswax under cork. Don't open it once it's full. Don't set it near your skin." "What do I owe you." "Come back and tell me it worked." She was already turning away. The prince walked him to the skiff. At the water he said, "The lake won't let you dip a jar. It has to be given. Find the flute shrine on the north shore. Play what's carved on the door." "I don't play." "Then find someone who does." He stepped back. "Go." The caterpillar tipped its cap. The current took them again. Aldric held the warm jar against his chest and stared north, where the lake waited and he still could not draw from it alone.

The skiff cut across the lake and slid onto a pebbled beach at the north shore. Aldric stepped out with the stoneware jar wrapped tight against his chest. The wolf jumped down and sniffed the ground. A stone shrine stood among the pines, its door carved with rows of notes. The lake behind him hummed low, waiting. He set his hand on the door and traced the carving. He could not read music. He had no flute. The prince's words came back to him. Find someone who does. He turned inland and followed a thin trail through the trees. The wolf stopped once and pressed hard against his leg, then eased when a small figure stepped from the ferns. A girl in a wide spotted cap. Bare feet. Orange hair down her back. She looked at him without surprise. "You are the one carrying the poisoned jar," she said. "I saw you in a spore-dream last night. I could not see the ending." She held up her hand. The tip of one finger was black. "I tested the wrong water. My visions are shorter now. But I can still tell you this. You will not play the shrine alone." "Then who plays it." "A man with a flute walks these paths when the ground is sick. He guided me once." She tilted her head. "He is not far. Follow the notes you cannot hear. My friend told me they hang in the air near the falls east of here." Aldric went east. The wolf led. At a small waterfall, pale marks drifted in the mist above the pool, hanging like moths. A tall figure stood at the edge, half man and half giraffe, holding a wooden flute to his long mouth. He played one of the hanging notes and it dropped into the water and vanished. "I need you at the shrine on the north shore," Aldric said. "My sister is dying. The lake will not give me water unless someone plays what's on the door." The tall man lowered his flute. "I know the door. I have passed it. I do not remember if I have played it." He looked at the notes still in the air, then at Aldric. "I will try." They walked back together. The wolf kept close. At the shrine the tall man studied the carving, set the flute to his lips, and played. The notes came slow at first, then clean. The lake behind them shifted. A narrow channel opened in the water and rose in a thin, still column at the shore. Aldric unwrapped the jar, worked the stopper free, and tipped the column into the mouth. The water poured in dark and heavy. He sealed the wax back down and stepped away. The tall man kept playing. His hands slowed. His eyes went far away. He lowered the flute and looked at Aldric. "I know my name," he said. "And I know who took it from me. She is walking here now."

The tall man lowered his flute and stared at the trees behind the shrine. His hands shook. Aldric held the sealed jar tight against his chest. The wolf pressed hard into his leg, then harder. Whatever walked toward them was close. "Go," the tall man said. "You have what you came for." "You played the door for me," Aldric said. "I don't leave you here." "She took my name once. She will take more this time." The tall man looked at the jar. "Your sister has days. I have minutes. Run." Aldric weighed it. Four days to his sister. One musician who had opened the lake for a stranger. He thought of his oldest daughter's knife left in the dirt at his camp. He thought of the coin in his pocket. He had walked away from a scene once and spent two months paying for it. "Behind me," Aldric said. He drew his bow. He set the jar down between his boots and nocked an arrow. The wolf turned toward the trail and lowered her head. A branch snapped. Then the ferns near the shrine parted, and a small figure stepped through instead. Orange hair. Wide spotted cap. Bare feet. The mushroom girl he had met on the path east. She was breathing hard. "She is coming up the shore trail," she said. "I saw it in the spores an hour ago. I ran." She looked at the tall man, and something soft moved across her face. "I owe you a guide back. Follow me." "Where," Aldric said. "A hollow under the falls. My grove sits above it. The smiling woman cannot cross the firebreak." She held up her blackened fingertip. "I paid for that line. It still holds." The tall man hesitated. The girl took his sleeve, careful with her bad hand. He let her. They moved. The wolf ran point. Aldric kept the jar wrapped against his ribs and the bow in his free hand. Behind them, a woman's voice called the tall man's name in a light, pleased tone. He flinched but did not turn. The girl pulled him faster. They reached a shallow cut in the ground where the earth was scorched black in a clean ring. The girl stepped over it first. The tall man followed. Aldric crossed last and felt the air change, dryer, quieter, as if a door had shut behind him. The voice on the trail stopped calling. Inside the ring, the girl set the tall man down against a stump. He was pale. His flute hung loose in his fingers. "He will remember more here," she said. "Slowly. Safely." She looked at Aldric. "Your skiff waits at the pebbled beach. Go now. The lake is quiet only until dawn." Aldric knelt. He put a hand on the tall man's shoulder once. Then he ran for the shore, the wolf at his heel, the sealed jar heavy against his heart.

Aldric ran down the trail with the sealed jar against his ribs and the wolf at his heel. The firebreak was behind him. His sister was four days ahead. The pebbled beach opened through the trees, gray in the pre-dawn light. He stopped at the waterline. The leaf-shaped skiff was gone. The caterpillar was gone. The little wooden chocks that had held the hull were scattered in the pebbles. He saw a drag mark where the boat had been pushed off, and a single set of soft prints in the wet sand that led into the water and did not come back. Aldric stood still. He counted. Six days back by trail. Four days until his sister was dead. He set the jar down between two stones so it would not tip. The wolf sat and did not whine. She watched him. "She was here," a small voice said behind him. The mushroom girl stood at the edge of the trees, breathing hard. Her bare feet were cut from the run. Her blackened fingertip was tucked against her palm. She was the seer who had paid a piece of herself to keep the smiling woman off him, and she had run from her own hollow to reach him. "Who," Aldric said. "The smiling woman. She could not cross the firebreak, so she came here instead. She spoke to the caterpillar. He is a small creature. He listens to kind voices." Chanterelle looked at the water. "She sent your boat out empty. She wanted you stranded with the jar." Aldric picked up the jar. His hand was steady. His chest was not. "There is no other skiff," Chanterelle said. "Not on this shore. The trail is six days. I have seen it." "Then I walk it," Aldric said. "She will die." "Say something useful." Chanterelle flinched. She closed her eyes. She stood very still with her bad hand against her chest, and Aldric watched spores drift from the underside of her cap and settle on the pebbles. Her lips moved. When she opened her eyes, they were wet. "There is a woman who keeps a glass house of herbs," she said. "Her plants slow poison. If you can reach her before your sister's third day, one leaf laid on the tongue buys you two more. I can draw the path. It is on your way." "Two more days," Aldric said. "Two more days to walk six." He looked at the empty water. He looked at the wolf. He looked at the coin-shaped weight in his pocket that he had carried for two months. "Draw it," he said. Chanterelle knelt on the pebbles and scratched a line with a stick. Aldric lifted the jar against his heart and started walking before the sun cleared the trees.

Aldric walked until the pebbled shore turned to packed dirt, and the dirt turned to a road. Chanterelle's scratched map showed a village half a day's walk inland, and beyond it the herbalist's glass house. But the map ended at the village. The mushroom girl had drawn a circle there and said only, "Ask. Someone will know her." He had the jar against his ribs and the wolf at his heel and three days left before his sister ran out of time. The village was small and awake. Aldric stopped the first three people he saw. A carter shrugged. A woman with a basket said she'd heard of an herbalist but didn't know the path. A boy pointed vaguely at the trees and ran off. Every wrong answer cost him minutes. The wolf pressed against his leg once, hard, when a man in a clean coat watched them too long from a doorway. Aldric moved on. At the square he saw a marble building with gold veined through its columns. Steam curled from its vents. Two old men sat on the steps in loose robes, arguing about a mead order. A woman inside laughed at something. A bathhouse. Where people sat with nothing to do but talk. He left the wolf by the steps and went in. The air was wet and warm. Bubbles rose from a wide tub under a hanging light. Painted butterflies clung to the rim. Four women soaked to their shoulders and looked at him without surprise. "I'm looking for the herbalist," Aldric said. "My sister is dying. I have three days." The oldest woman set down her cup. "Sylvana Greene. Follow the creek east from the mill until you smell mint. Her glass house sits in a clearing. She talks to her plants. Don't laugh at her for it." "How far." "Two hours if you run." He ran. The wolf ran beside him. The creek bent east past a broken mill wheel, and the smell hit him before he saw the roof — mint, then something sharper, then flowers he couldn't name. The glass house stood in a clearing with sun on it. A red-haired woman knelt in the doorway with her hands in a shallow tray of soil, murmuring to a row of seedlings. She looked up. Her eyes moved to the jar, then to his face. "You've been running," Sylvana said. She stood and wiped her hands on her skirt. "Who is dying." "My sister. Poison. Three days." "Come inside. Show me the jar." Aldric stepped through the door. The glass caught the light and threw it across a hundred living plants. Sylvana was already reaching for a jar of dark leaves on a high shelf. She had not asked his name. She had asked what he carried, and that was the first useful question anyone had put to him since the shore.

Sylvana pulled the dark leaves down and crushed one between her fingers. She smelled it, then set it aside. She reached for a second jar, a third, a fourth. Her hands moved without pause until she stopped at a low shelf and stared. "Empty," she said. She turned the jar upside down. A single flake fell out. "I used the last on a bee sting three days ago and forgot to restock." "What is it," Aldric said. "Bindweed root. Without it the tincture won't hold. The poison in your jar will boil off before it touches your sister's blood." She set the empty jar on the table. "I can grow it in a season. You don't have a season." Aldric felt the wolf lean against his knee. He pushed the feeling down and made himself think. Bindweed root. He knew the words. He had heard them, or seen them, somewhere he couldn't place. Then he did place it. Not a memory. A dream. Two nights on the skiff he had dreamed of a hill above a lake, and a woman in glasses kneeling on a slope pulling white flowers out of the grass. She had complained about the roots. She had said the word twice. "The potter," Aldric said. "Red hair. Glasses. She had a hill above the lake covered in white flowers. She was digging them out because they choked her paint plants." Sylvana looked up. "Roswyn." "I dreamed it on the water. Two nights running." "Moonflowers grow with bindweed. She'd pull the bindweed to save the moonflowers." Sylvana was already reaching for a satchel. "How far." "A day if I run. Less if I don't sleep." "Then don't sleep." She pressed a folded paper into his hand. "Draw the root for her. Three fingers thick. White inside, not yellow. Yellow is a different plant and it will kill your sister faster than the poison." He ran. The wolf ran with him. He crossed the creek and the mill and the village and the road back the way he had come. The sun dropped. He kept going. He reached the lake road in gray light before dawn and found the kiln smoking and the potter asleep in a chair beside it with a notebook open on her lap. He woke her. She blinked behind her glasses and pushed hair off her face. "Bindweed," he said. "On your hill. I need root, three fingers thick, white inside." Roswyn stared at him a moment. Then she stood. "The whole hill's crawling with it. Take what you need. Take a shovel." She walked him to the slope. He dug. The wolf sat and watched. He pulled six roots as thick as his thumb and one as thick as three fingers, white all the way through. He wrapped them in the cloth from his coat and turned back east. Two days left. He had the root. He had to run it back before his sister ran out.

Aldric ran east with the roots wrapped in his coat cloth. The wolf kept pace beside him. He crossed the ridge before noon and pulled the bundle out to check it. The thickest root had already gone soft. The white inside was turning gray at the cut end. He pressed a thumbnail into it and the flesh gave like wet bread. He stopped in the road. Two days of riding ahead. The roots would be pulp before he reached his sister. Sylvana's paper had said white, not gray. Gray would not save her. He turned around and ran back. Roswyn was at her worktable when he came into the yard again. She looked up from a bowl she was trimming and set the tool down without a word. The kiln behind her still breathed heat. "They're wilting," Aldric said. He opened the cloth on her table. "I need two days out of them. I have half a day." Roswyn pushed her glasses up and leaned over the roots. She touched the soft one, then the firm ones. "Cut roots die in air. They need dark and damp and cold." She was already moving. "I can seal them." "Seal them how." "Small jar. Wet moss. Ash glaze lid, wax at the seam." She pulled a squat pot off a shelf and turned it in her hands. "This one's fired hard. I'll pack it now." She crossed to the slope behind the kiln and came back with a handful of green moss, still cold from the shaded side of a stone. She soaked it in a water bowl and wrung it out halfway. She laid the moss in the pot. She laid the roots on the moss, thickest at the bottom. She covered them with more moss and pressed it down with her palm. "Wax," she said. She lit a stub of candle from the kiln coals and let it drip around the lid until the seam was closed. She pressed the soft wax smooth with her thumb. "How long does that hold them," Aldric said. "Four days if you keep it out of sun. Two if you don't." She wrapped a strip of leather around the pot and tied it. "Ride at night. Bury it in your saddlebag under cloth in the day." He took the pot. It was heavier than he expected. The weight felt like a promise he could carry. "Thank you," he said. Roswyn wiped wax off her thumb on her apron. "Bring the jar back when she's on her feet." He whistled the wolf up and went to the road. A horse he'd bartered for at the village stood tied where he'd left her. He fixed the pot into the saddlebag between folds of wool and swung up. The sun was already halfway down. Two days of riding. One sealed pot. The roots were alive inside it, for now. He turned the horse east and kicked her into a run.

The horse broke down at dusk. Aldric felt her stumble on a flat stretch of road, then again on the rise. He pulled her up and slid off. Her sides heaved. Foam ran from the bit. He put a hand on her neck and knew she would not carry him through the night. On foot he had two days of road ahead. The sealed pot in his saddlebag would go to pulp before he reached Sylvana Greene's glass house. He stood in the road with the wolf beside him and tried to think. The wolf pressed hard into his leg. Not danger this time. A steady weight, holding him up. "Aldric." The mushroom girl stepped out from between two pines. Her cap tilted with her head. She was the seer who had hidden the flute player from the smiling woman, and who had already given up part of herself to keep him alive. Her left hand was wrapped in cloth now. New damage. She held her right hand out flat. "You cannot walk it," she said. "And she cannot run it." She nodded at the horse. "I know." His voice came out thin. "Tell me you brought something." "I brought a loan." She stepped aside. Behind her, folded in the moss, lay a carpet. Deep red, edged in yellow and green, tassels at the corners. It sat above the ground by a hand's width, hovering, patient. "It belongs to a friend of a friend," Chanterelle said. "It will fly you east. Once. Then it goes home." Aldric looked at her wrapped hand. "What did this cost you." "A wish I was saving." She almost smiled. "Get on." He pulled the sealed pot from the saddlebag and cradled it against his chest. He loosed the horse's girth and let her stand free. He stepped onto the carpet. It gave under his boot like packed sand. The wolf jumped up beside him without being called. "Stay low," Chanterelle said. "Hold the jar tight. It knows where Sylvana lives." "How." "I told it." The carpet lifted. The tops of the pines slid past his knees, then his waist. Cold air pushed his hair back. He looked down once. Chanterelle raised her good hand. Then the trees closed under him and there was only wind and the dark shape of the ridges rolling east. He held the pot against his ribs. He could feel the wax seam under his thumb, still whole. The roots were alive inside. He would reach the glass house before dawn. The wolf laid her head on his knee. Aldric closed his eyes for one breath, then opened them and watched the land pour past. Somewhere ahead, Sylvana was waiting with her dark leaves already crushed. Somewhere behind, Chanterelle had spent another piece of herself to buy him this night. He would owe her again. First he had to land.

The carpet flew straight for an hour. Then it began to drift. Aldric felt the corner under his knee sag left, and the wind changed shoulders. The ridges below stopped rolling east and started sliding north. He pressed his palm flat on the weave. "East," he said. The carpet did not answer. It kept drifting. He shifted his weight the other way. The tassels flicked. The carpet slid harder north. He checked the pot against his ribs. The wax seam held, but he could feel the heat of his own hand warming the clay. Chanterelle had told the carpet where Sylvana lived. She had not told him how to hold it to the line. He tried leaning, tried a fistful of tassel, tried talking to it the way he talked to the wolf. Nothing worked. The stars swung wrong above him. Lights showed below. A tavern stood on a rise, windows lit yellow, chimneys smoking, a wide porch strung with lanterns. Travelers moved on the deck. The carpet was drifting toward it whether he wanted it or not. He decided to want it. He leaned hard until the carpet dropped. It landed clumsy on the porch boards. The wolf jumped off first. Heads turned. Aldric held up the sealed pot so they could see he was not armed for trouble. "I need a pilot," he said. "For a carpet. Tonight." A man at the rail turned around. Blond, cape, a dragonfly perched on his collar. Aldric knew him from the kiln. The prince who had helped fire the stoneware jar. "You," Mycel said. He looked at the carpet, then at the pot. "That's Sylvana's roots." "They spoil at dawn." "And you can't steer." "No." Mycel stepped down off the rail. The dragonfly lifted, hovered, bit his ear once, and settled again. "It's a Southern weave. They answer to the old trade tongue. You have to name the destination out loud, in its language, every time it forgets." He almost smiled. "It forgets often." "You speak it." "I speak all of them." He was already stepping onto the carpet. "Sit behind me. Hold the pot. Don't talk while I'm talking." Aldric sat. The wolf climbed on. Mycel put both hands on the front edge and spoke three words Aldric did not know. The carpet snapped tight under them and lifted clean off the porch. The drift stopped. The nose pointed east and held. "How long to the glass house?" Aldric asked. "Two hours. Maybe less. It listens to me." Aldric looked down at the pot. The wax was still whole. He would land before dawn now. He would owe the prince, and he would still owe Chanterelle, and Sylvana would be waiting with her leaves already crushed. He closed his hand around the coin in his pocket and watched the ridges roll east again, the right way this time.

The carpet dropped over the creek and Mycel brought it down soft in the grass outside Sylvana's glass house. Aldric was off before it settled. He held the pot against his chest with both hands. The wax seam was still whole. The sky over the trees was gray but not yet pink. He had made it before dawn. Sylvana opened the door before he knocked. Her hair was tied back and her sleeves were pushed up to the elbow. A bowl of crushed dark leaves sat on the table behind her. She looked at the pot, then at his face. "You're on time," she said. "Bring it in." He set the pot on her workbench. She broke the wax with a thin knife and lifted the lid. The moss inside was still damp. The roots were still white. She let out a breath he had not seen her holding. "Three days of tincture," she said. "She'll wake by the second." "She's here?" Sylvana pointed with the knife toward the back room. "Since yesterday. I moved her when the fever climbed." Aldric went past her. The wolf followed and stopped at the doorway. His sister lay on a low cot under a green blanket. Her face was thin. Her lips were cracked. But her chest rose and fell, and her hand twitched when the wolf whined once at the door. He knelt beside the cot. He put his forehead against her knuckles. She smelled like sweat and mint. He could feel her pulse through the back of her hand, small and steady. Two months of tracking, and here she was, breathing. He reached into his pocket and found the coin his oldest daughter had given him. He pressed it against his sister's palm and closed her fingers over it. He did not know why. It felt right to give her something. Sylvana came in with a clay cup. "Lift her head." He slid his arm under his sister's shoulders. Sylvana tipped the cup to her mouth. His sister swallowed twice, then coughed, then swallowed again. Her eyes did not open, but her jaw softened. "That's the worst of it," Sylvana said. "She'll drink more at midday." Aldric sat on the floor beside the cot. He let his back rest against the wall. The wolf came in and lay across his boots. For the first time in two months, he was not moving toward something. His hands started to shake. He let them. Sylvana watched him from the doorway. "You should sleep." "In a minute." She nodded and left him there. Outside, he heard Mycel speaking to the carpet in a tongue he did not know. He heard the wolf breathing. He heard his sister breathing. He closed his eyes. Then he remembered his wife. His daughters. The four sets of boot prints. His sister was safe, and the rest of them were still gone. He opened his eyes again.