Aldric Thornwood sat on a stump at the edge of Waspwood and admitted he could not remember the way. Forty years ago he had walked this path with his wife, and he had sworn on her grave to return one day and bless the oldest tree in the region. Now his legs shook after half a mile. His red robe hung damp with sweat. The gnarled cane she had carved him over three winters trembled in his fist. He had three days of food and less than that in strength, and the trees ahead all looked the same. Ephrat crouched near him, tightening the strap on his boot. The boy had followed from the village without asking. He was not kin by blood, only the neighbor's grandson, but he had stood at the road that morning with his blue hair pushed back under his red headband and refused to turn around. Aldric had scolded him twice. Ephrat had not answered either time. "I can't find it," Aldric said. "The path forks somewhere past the stream. I don't remember which side." Ephrat stood. "Then I'll ask." "Ask who." "The toad by the stream. Grandfather said he knows the wood." Aldric almost laughed. Then he saw the boy meant it, and he was too tired to argue. He waved him on. Ephrat found the old frog wizard sitting on a flat stone at the water's edge, wrapped in an orange robe, his gray beard trailing past his knee. The toad blinked slowly and did not seem surprised to be spoken to. "My grandfather needs the oldest tree," Ephrat said. "Before his time runs out." The toad folded his small green hands. "The wood does not give its heart to any who walk in. You must ask the lady first." "What lady." "The hooded one at the shrine, past the black stones. Bring her a fairyvander bloom. Place it on her offering table. She will show you the path." "A flower." "One bloom. No less. She counts." Ephrat nodded once and went back. He repeated the instructions flat, the way the toad had said them. Aldric listened with his cane braced across his knees. "A fairyvander," Aldric said. "They grow near graves. There's a cemetery on the north edge of the wood. Weathered stones, iron fence. I passed it with her, once." He stopped. He did not say whose grave. "I'll go," Ephrat said. "You'll go alone?" "You can't walk it. I can." Aldric looked at the boy's small shoulders and the fading light between the trees. He thought of his grandson at home, certain the road would kill him. He thought of the oath. He pulled a folded cloth from his robe and pressed it into Ephrat's hand. "Wrap the stem in this. Don't crush the petals." Ephrat took it and started north toward the cemetery. Aldric stayed on the stump, counting the light he had left.

Aldric sat where Ephrat had left him. The stump had gone cold under his robe. The boy had been gone long enough that the light between the trunks had shifted from gold to gray. Aldric kept his cane across his knees and listened to the wood the way his wife had taught him, forty years back. Something was wrong with the quiet. A branch cracked to his left. Then a low sound came out of the brush, not a growl but a breath drawn through teeth. Aldric turned his head slow. A beige wolf stood between two birches, low on all fours, yellow eyes fixed on him. Its ribs pushed against its coat. Its muzzle was dark with dried blood. Aldric had seen wolves in this country as a young man. He knew the shape of a hungry one. "Old man," the wolf said. "You sit on my track." Aldric did not move his hands. "I'm resting. I mean no harm." "Something dragged my kill past the stones. The trail runs under your feet." The wolf took one step forward. "Move." Aldric looked past the wolf. Twenty paces behind it, half-hidden in ivy and heaped rock, he saw the mouth of a den. Bones lay scattered at the entrance. Tufts of fur clung to the wood braces. Whatever had stolen the elk had dragged it in there, and the wolf meant to follow. If Aldric stood and stumbled off, the wolf would take the trail and the noise would carry. Ephrat would come back from the cemetery to an empty stump and no way to find him. The path to the oldest tree ran through this meeting. Aldric planted the cane and pushed himself up. His knees shook. He did not step aside. "The thing in that den killed once already," Aldric said. "You go in alone, you don't come out. Your pack loses two meals instead of one." The wolf's ears flicked back. "The meat is ours by the stones." "Then bring the pack. I'll sit here till you do. I won't move the trail." Aldric lowered himself back onto the stump, slow, so the wolf saw it was not a trick. "I'm too tired to run. You'd catch me in three strides. Go get the others." The wolf held still a long moment. Its nose worked. Then it turned and went back the way it came, fast, low to the ground. Aldric let his breath out. His hands shook against the cane. He had held the ground. Ephrat would find him here. Then he looked again at the den. The wolf would return with its pack before the boy came back with the flower. Whatever waited inside that mouth of stone had heard every word. Aldric could see the dark past the braces, and something in the dark had shifted.

The dark inside the den shifted again. Aldric heard a wet sound, a claw scrape on stone. Whatever waited in there had listened to the whole talk with the wolf. Now it knew he sat alone. The stump gave him nothing. No rock at his back, no ditch, no low branch to swing under. When the thing came out, it would cross the open ground in two bounds and he would be under it. Aldric pushed himself up on the cane. His knees held. He turned a slow circle and looked for anything he could put between himself and the den mouth. Ten paces off, half swallowed by nettles, a wooden signpost leaned out of the ground. He limped to it. The board was old, the letters carved deep and darkened by rain. Whispering Woods. The post ran thick as his arm and stood taller than him, braced by a cross of iron nails at the base. Someone had driven it deep, long ago, to mark a trail no one used now. He set his back against the post. It held. It would not stop a charge, but it would break the line. A thing coming fast would have to swerve, and a swerve would give him one swing. He heard the claw again, closer to the mouth. Aldric planted the cane in the dirt beside his boot and waited. His wife had carved the cane over three winters. He had leaned on it for forty. He knew its weight the way he knew his own hand. The creature came out low. It was not a wolf. It was longer, gray, with a flat head and too many teeth. It saw him at once and lunged. Aldric did not move from the post. At the last stride the thing cut left to take him from the open side, exactly as he'd hoped. He swung the cane two-handed across its skull as it passed. The wood cracked against bone. The creature spilled sideways into the nettles and rolled up snarling, one eye shut with blood. It did not charge again. It circled once, low, testing him. Then it turned and slunk back toward the den mouth, dragging one foreleg. Aldric stayed against the post until it was gone. His arms shook. He looked down at the cane. A long split ran up the shaft from the tip, white wood showing through the dark grain. His wife's work, cracked. He lowered himself to the base of the signpost and sat in the nettles. He would not make it back to the stump. When Ephrat came with the flower, he would have to find Aldric here, under the old sign, with a broken cane and a wounded thing bleeding somewhere in the rocks between them and the path forward.

Aldric sat against the signpost and listened. Blood ran down his sleeve where the creature's claw had caught him. The cane lay across his knees, split up the shaft. He tried to close his hand on it and could not make a proper fist. If the thing came back before Ephrat did, he would not stand up in time. He heard footsteps from the wrong direction. Not the cemetery path. Somewhere further off, quick and light. A boy's stride. Aldric turned his head against the post and waited to see who broke the nettles first. Ephrat came out of the brush at a run. Blue hair stuck to his forehead under the red headband. He had the cloth bundle held tight against his chest with both hands. He saw Aldric on the ground and stopped short. His eyes went to the blood, then to the cracked cane, then to the dark mouth of the den across the clearing. "You moved," Ephrat said. "I had to." "The flower's whole." He knelt and set the bundle in Aldric's lap. He did not ask about the wound yet. He looked at the cane instead. "It broke." "It held long enough." Ephrat pulled Aldric's sleeve back and looked at the gash. He tore a strip from his own shirt and bound it tight above the cut. His hands were steady. He had done this before, or watched someone do it, and copied the way. "Can you stand?" Ephrat asked. "Not far." "You don't have to go far. Just off the trail." He got a shoulder under Aldric's arm and lifted. Aldric was heavier than the boy, but Ephrat set his feet and took the weight without a word. The cane went under Aldric's other hand. The split wood groaned but held. They moved ten paces into the brush behind the signpost, where a fallen log made a low wall. Ephrat lowered him against it and crouched beside him. He drew a short knife Aldric had not seen before and laid it across his knee, watching the den. "It's wounded," Aldric said. "One eye. One leg." "Good." "It may still come." "Then I'll be here." Aldric looked at the boy's face. Ephrat did not look back. He was watching the clearing the way a hunter watches a snare. Aldric had told him at the stump to go home. He had told him at the village gate not to follow. The boy had ignored every word, and now Aldric was alive because of it. He unfolded the cloth in his lap. The fairyvander bloom lay inside, pale blue, unbruised. The offering for the hooded lady at the shrine past the black stones. The next step of the path he had come three days to walk. "We go to the shrine at first light," Aldric said. Ephrat nodded once and kept his eyes on the den.

Morning came gray through the trees. Aldric woke against the log with the cloth bundle still on his lap. The bleeding had stopped. The bound sleeve was stiff. Ephrat was already crouched beside him, watching the trail, knife across his knee. "Den's quiet," Ephrat said. "Then we go now." Aldric pushed at the log with his good hand. Pain flared under the bandage, but his legs took him. He stood. He held the cracked cane and found it would still bear weight if he kept it straight. He drew a breath and let it out slow. He had strength for this. Not much more. Enough for the walk to the shrine and back to sitting. "I can take the flower alone," Ephrat said. "No. I go too." Ephrat looked at him. He did not argue. He shouldered under Aldric's free arm and matched his pace. They passed the black stones one at a time. Aldric counted them to keep his feet moving. Past the last stone the path opened into a small clearing. The shrine stood at the far end. A stone statue of a hooded woman rose from a low base, one hand raised, a butterfly carved onto her palm. Her face was tilted toward the butterfly. She looked kind. Before the statue stood a long table draped in silver-white cloth. Bowls sat along it. Candles burned between them, though no one was there to have lit them. Aldric stopped at the edge of the clearing. His legs shook. He put the cracked cane down first, then took his arm off Ephrat's shoulder. "Give me the flower," he said. Ephrat unfolded the cloth and set the pale blue bloom in Aldric's hand. "Now go," Aldric said. "Place it on the table. In one of the empty bowls." "You want to watch." "I came three days to see the offering made. I'll see it made." Ephrat took the flower. He walked to the table. He chose the center bowl, empty and white, and set the bloom inside. He stepped back. Aldric watched from the edge. He kept his weight on the cane and did not sit. The candles did not flicker. The statue did not move. But the air in the clearing changed. It went still the way a room goes still when someone has entered it. Ephrat turned to come back. He stopped halfway. His head lifted. He was looking past Aldric, at the trail behind them. "Grandfather," he said. He never used the word. "Don't turn around." Aldric heard it then. A soft dragging step on the path. One foot, then a pause, then another. Coming slow. Coming from the direction of the den. The offering was placed. The hooded lady had not yet come. And the thing with one eye and one leg had followed them to the shrine.

The dragging step came closer. Aldric turned his head, slow, and saw it push out from the trees. One eye, wet and yellow, set in the middle of a gray face. One leg under it, thick as a post, hopping with a small lurch each time. It was taller than a man. It smelled like the den. Aldric's arm would not lift. His legs were shaking from the walk in. The cracked cane was all he had, and it would not swing twice before he went down. He knew it plain as counting crates. "Ephrat," he said. "Behind the table." The boy did not go behind the table. He came forward instead, past Aldric, and stopped between him and the creature. He pulled a slingshot from his belt. Ephrat was the neighbor's grandson, fourteen, who had followed Aldric into these woods against every word Aldric had spoken. Now he stood in the open with a leather strap and a pocket of stones. "Get back," Aldric said. "No." Ephrat fit a stone. He drew. The creature hopped once and swung its head toward the sound. Ephrat let the stone fly. It struck the eye. The creature screamed, a wet high sound, and rocked back on its one leg. "Again," Aldric said. Ephrat was already loading. The second stone hit the eye at the edge. The third took it in the center. The creature dropped forward on its stump of a leg and could not catch itself. It fell hard against a tree at the clearing's edge. It thrashed. It could not stand. Ephrat did not lower the sling. He walked closer, loaded again, and put a fourth stone through the eye at ten paces. The creature stopped thrashing. Its chest moved once and then did not move. The clearing went quiet. The candles on the long table still burned. The pale blue flower sat in the white bowl. The hooded statue looked at the butterfly on her palm. Aldric's knees gave. He went down onto the grass beside the cracked cane. Ephrat came back to him and knelt. "You are bleeding again," Ephrat said. "A little." "I told you I could come alone." "You did." Aldric looked at the boy's hands. They were shaking now, after. The slingshot hung from one finger. Aldric had spent three days trying to send this child home, and this child had just kept him alive. "Thank you," Aldric said. He had not said it before. Ephrat nodded, once, and looked away. Behind them, at the offering table, the air moved. A shadow crossed the silver cloth that had not been there a breath before. Something had come into the clearing that they had not seen arrive. Aldric felt it at the back of his neck. He could not yet turn to look.

Aldric knelt in the grass beside his cracked cane. Ephrat crouched next to him, the slingshot still hanging from one finger. The one-legged creature lay dead against a tree at the clearing's edge. Behind them, the air at the offering table had shifted, and Aldric felt the weight of it on the back of his neck. He turned. A woman stood at the altar. She was made of light. Her shape matched the hooded statue in every line, but she was bright, like a lamp behind thin cloth. The pale blue flower still sat in the white bowl at her hip. She did not walk. She was there, then closer, then closer again. Ephrat lifted the slingshot. Aldric put a hand on his wrist and pushed it down. "She's what we paid for," Aldric said. The boy lowered the strap. His hands were still shaking from the kill. Ephrat was fourteen, the neighbor's grandson, and he had followed Aldric into these woods against every warning. Aldric had stopped trying to send him back two days ago. The Lady of the Waspwood stopped an arm's length away. She looked down at Aldric first. Her face was the statue's face, calm and closed. She lifted her hand and set it against his cheek. He felt no heat and no cold. He felt something quieter. The ache in his ribs eased a small measure. The bleeding at his side slowed. It did not stop. She turned to Ephrat and touched his forehead with two fingers. The boy closed his eyes. Then she held out her other hand. A folded square of pale cloth rested on her palm. Aldric took it. He opened one corner. Lines showed through the weave, dark and moving as he tilted the cloth, like ink still wet. A path. A stream. A ring of stones. At the center, a single mark shaped like a leaf. "The oldest tree," Aldric said. The Lady did not speak. She stepped back. The light of her thinned. The statue at the altar stood as it had before, stone, hooded, holding its carved butterfly. Ephrat opened his eyes. "Did she\u201" "Yes." Aldric folded the cloth against his chest. Forty years he had carried the oath. Three days he had walked. He had the path now. He tried to stand. His legs would not hold. He sat back down hard. Ephrat slid an arm under his shoulder. "Show me the map." Aldric opened it across his knee. The leaf mark lay far from the shrine. Between it and them, the map showed a narrow line crossing what looked like open ground, and past that, a shape Aldric did not know how to read yet. Something waited on the way. But the path was his. He had not had that yesterday. "We go at first light," he said.

At first light Aldric folded the cloth map and pushed himself up on his cracked cane. Ephrat carried the pack. They walked the line marked on the weave, past the ring of stones, along a stream Aldric did not remember crossing. By midday the map led them to a wall of gray rock covered in moss. An arch opened in the stone. Water ran out of it in a thin channel. "This is it," Aldric said. He held the cloth against the arch. The leaf mark sat just past the opening. Ephrat looked in. "Pines. A river." "Inside a cave?" "Look." Aldric bent under the arch. The cave was not a cave. It opened into a valley full of tall pines and sky. The river ran between the trees toward something Aldric could not see yet. He stepped through. The air changed. It smelled of sap and wet stone. His ribs did not hurt as much. They followed the water. The pines thinned. In a clearing at the center stood the tree. Aldric stopped. He had carried the picture of this tree in his head for forty years and had gotten it wrong. The trunk was wider than a house. The roots ran out across the ground like the fingers of a hand pressed flat. Marks he could not read wound up the bark. Small lights moved in the leaves. He walked to the roots and lowered himself between two of them. Ephrat stayed back at the edge of the clearing, the slingshot loose in his hand. Aldric set the cracked cane across his knees. He put one hand flat on the bark. He spoke his wife's name, and then the words he had sworn on her grave. He said them out loud for the first time in forty years. His voice held. When he was done he pressed his forehead to the root and rested there. He waited for the blessing to leave him. That was the shape of the oath. He would give the last of what she had asked him to carry, and the tree would take it. Nothing left him. He lifted his head. The bark was warm under his palm. The small lights in the leaves had gathered lower, above him, watching. He understood then that he had come to the wrong end of the exchange. He had walked three days and forty years to give, and the tree was here to give back. His hand shook on the bark. "I don't know what to do with it," he said. Ephrat stepped closer. "With what?" Aldric could not answer yet. Whatever the tree meant to hand him was larger than the oath. He could feel the shape of it waiting against his palm, and he did not know if he had the days left to carry it out. He kept his hand on the bark. "Sit down," he told the boy. "We're not done."

Aldric kept his hand on the bark and waited. The small lights lowered through the leaves and settled around his wrist. Something soft brushed the back of his fingers. When he pulled his hand away, a clump of pale green moss sat in his palm. It gave off a faint warmth, like bread just out of an oven. He knew, without being told, that this was what the tree had come to give. Moss for happy dreams. A blessing for the village he had left behind. "That's it?" Ephrat said. He had come up beside the root. "That's it." Aldric closed his fingers around the moss. His hand shook. Not from the moss. From the walk still ahead of him. Three days back, on legs that had barely carried him here. He tried to stand. His knees would not lock. He caught the root with his free hand and stopped halfway up. The cracked cane slid off his lap and clattered against the wood. His breath came thin. Black spots crossed the edges of his sight. "Sit," Ephrat said. He crouched and pushed Aldric back against the root. "You'll fall." "I know I'll fall." Aldric held the moss against his chest. "That's the trouble." Ephrat picked up the cane and looked at it. The crack ran deeper now. He set it aside. "I can't carry this out," Aldric said. "I can't carry myself out. If I go down between here and the arch, the moss goes with me. It dries. It's nothing." He looked at the boy. His neighbor's grandson. The one who had followed him against his word and saved his life at the shrine. "I need you." Ephrat did not answer at first. He looked at the moss, then at Aldric's face. "Say it plain," Ephrat said. "Carry me if you have to. Carry the moss for certain. Get it to the village. Give it to my grandson. Tell him what it's for." "And you?" "Get me as far as you can." Ephrat nodded once. He took the pack off his shoulder and opened it. He pulled out the cloth that had wrapped the fairyvander bloom and folded the moss into it. He tied the bundle to his belt where he could feel it against his hip. Then he slid an arm under Aldric's shoulder and lifted. Aldric came up against him, lighter than the boy had expected. The cracked cane went into Aldric's right hand. Ephrat's shoulder took the left side. "Slow," Ephrat said. "Slow is all I have." They turned from the tree. The small lights followed them a few steps and then stayed. Aldric did not look back. He kept his eyes on the pines and the thin line of the river, and he made his legs move, one and then the other, against the weight of the moss at the boy's hip.