Aldric Wanderfoot turned his empty food sack inside out and shook it. A single crumb fell into the dirt. He watched an ant carry it away. He was seventy-one years old, four days into the Forsaken Undergrowth, and looking for a grove he had heard about only in a dying man's story. The grove was said to sit deep past the black ferns, quiet enough for a tired body to lie down and stay down. Aldric wanted that quiet. His knees wanted it more. But a man could not walk to rest on nothing. He had rationed hard and rationed wrong. Now his legs shook when he stood. If he pressed on today, he would fall on the trail and the forest would keep him where he dropped. He sat against a mossy trunk and made himself think. He had twine in his pack, a bent green sapling, and the small frame of a net he had woven two nights back by firelight. He finished it now, knotting the last gaps with slow fingers. Small creatures ran the roots along this stretch. He had seen their tracks at dawn. He set the net over a burrow mouth, propped the sapling, tied the trigger line, and crawled back to wait. His stomach turned on itself. He closed his eyes and counted breaths so he would not sleep. Something moved. The sapling snapped up. Aldric lunged and pinned the net down with both hands. Inside, a plump ferret with silky brown fur twisted and hissed. Fat little thing. Well-fed on something he could not see. He held it a long moment. Then he heard whistling. A man came around the bend in a wide straw hat, a basket of blueberries balanced on one hip. His beard was gray and streaked white. He stopped whistling when he saw Aldric on his knees in the dirt with a live animal under a net. "That one's been robbing my patch for a month," the stranger said. He set the basket down. "Name's Silas Thornberry. You planning to eat him or thank him?" "Eat him," Aldric said. His voice came out cracked. Silas looked at Aldric's shaking hands. He looked at the empty sack by the trunk. He picked up his basket and walked over and set it beside Aldric's knee. "Trade you," Silas said. "Ferret for half the berries and a strip of smoked pork from my bag. You look like you'll drop before you skin him." Aldric almost refused. Pride tried. His body did not let it finish. "Done," he said. They traded. Silas tucked the netted ferret under one arm and tipped his hat. "Grove's another two days east, if that's where you're headed. Ground gets soft past the black ferns. Watch your step, old man." He walked on, whistling again. Aldric ate slowly. The shaking eased. He looked east, where the ferns darkened, and understood Silas had known exactly where he was going.

Aldric walked the rest of the day on Silas Thornberry's berries and pork. The food held him upright, but only just. By dusk his knees were locking with each step. Two more days east lay the black ferns, and past them the grove he had come all this way to find. He would not reach the ferns if he slept another night on cold ground. He smelled woodsmoke before he saw the light. A crooked building leaned between two pines, lanterns burning on its porch. A painted sign swung above the door. A tavern, this deep in the Undergrowth. He almost laughed. Inside, the warmth hit him like a hand on the chest. A bartender wiped a mug behind the counter. A potted fern sat by the window, its fronds streaked with dark veins. Three travelers ate at a table and did not look up. Aldric counted his coins on the bar. Eleven. A bed was fifteen. A meal was six. "Short," the bartender said, not unkindly. "I know it." "Floor by the hearth is free if you buy the stew." Aldric almost took it. Then he remembered the story a trapper had told him a year back, over a fire he no longer remembered the shape of. A chest, the trapper said. Buried under a split boulder half a day's walk into the Undergrowth. Nobody had found it because nobody believed it. He had passed a split boulder that morning. "Hold the bed," Aldric said. "I'll be back before midnight." The bartender shrugged and poured him a cup of water for the road. Aldric went back out into the dark. His legs argued every step. He found the boulder by moonlight, a gray hump cracked down the middle, moss along the seam. He knelt and dug with his knife where the dirt was loose. His hands were shaking again. He almost stopped twice. The blade struck wood. He scraped until he saw iron banding and a rusted lock. He pried the lock with the knife until it snapped. Inside, coins. Not a fortune. Enough. He filled both coat pockets and left the rest, because he could not carry more and still walk. He made it back to the tavern near midnight and set three coins on the bar. The bartender raised an eyebrow and said nothing. Aldric climbed the stairs on hands and knees at the top step. He fell into the bed with his boots still on. He slept twelve hours. When he woke, the shaking was gone from his hands. His knees were sore but solid. He paid for a second night and a sack of bread and salt pork for the road. Two days east. He could walk it now.