Blueberry Shroomy stepped through the round door of her blue toadstool home and stopped. She wanted only one thing: quiet days among her berries. Outside, her little berry-headed sprout still leaned by the path, leaves trembling. Inside, her wooden table lay overturned. Cups rolled across the floor. Blue feathers and claw marks tracked toward the open window. She knew where the sprite had gone. She followed the trail to the forbidden tree at the forest's edge. Its huge trunk twisted up into heavy green leaves. A dark hollow gaped between its roots, lined with torn moss where the sprite had crawled inside. Blueberry Shroomy crouched at the opening. Two orange eyes blinked back. She held out a single ripe berry and waited, breath steady. The sprite snatched it, hissed, then darted deeper into the roots and was gone. She walked home in the cool light. The mess was still hers to fix, but the intruder had fled. For the first night in a long while, her field felt almost still.

Blueberry Shroomy set the table upright and gathered the cups. The window still hung open above the sill, its frame splintered where the sprite had clawed its way out. Cold air moved through the room. She touched the broken hinge and felt the wood give. She could not fix this alone, and dusk was coming. She crossed the field to the low stone wall at its edge, where the field handyman kept his lean-to. He was older, gray-bearded, with a tool belt that clinked when he walked. He had patched her roof once, two winters back, and taken payment in berries. She trusted his hands more than his words. "Cole," she said. "My window is broken. I need it closed tonight." He looked up from a length of pine he was planing. "How broken?" "Hinge torn out. Frame split along the top." He set the plane down and reached for his belt. "Show me." They walked back through the rows. She kept her eyes on the east side out of habit, on the three rows where the bruised berries hung. Cole noticed her looking but said nothing. At the cottage, he climbed onto a crate and ran his thumb along the split. "Wood's dry," he said. "I can brace it. Won't be pretty." "I don't need pretty." He pulled a short board from his belt loop and cut it to length with a small saw. He drove three screws through the frame and set a new hinge over the torn one. The window swung, caught, then closed clean against the sill. He tested the latch twice. "That'll hold," he said. "Replace it proper in spring." She nodded. "Thank you." He wiped his hands on his trousers and looked past her, toward the east rows. "Your berries are marked." "I know." "Not birds." "No." He waited, but she offered nothing more. He shouldered his belt and stepped down from the crate. "Bring me a basket when you can. We'll call it even." Then he walked back toward the wall. Blueberry Shroomy stood alone in the cottage. She latched the window and pressed her palm flat against the glass. The seal held. No draft moved her sleeve. For the first time in many nights, her home was closed. She went to the door to draw the bolt and stopped. On the step outside, just below the threshold, sat a single blueberry. Its skin bore a round, deep bruise, the kind she had seen only in the east rows. No tracks led to it. No tracks led away. She picked it up. It was still cool. She closed the door and slid the bolt into place. The window was fixed. The field was not. Whatever had leaned on her berries in the dark now knew the shape of her door.

Blueberry Shroomy sat with the bruised berry on the table until the light went gray. The window was fixed. The door was bolted. Neither would matter if the thing outside could set a berry on her step without leaving a track. She needed help from someone who would not ask her to explain, and she knew only one person like that. She took the berry in a folded cloth and walked the field path north, past the east rows, to the small blue mushroom house at the low end of the slope. Its cap was beaded with damp. She knocked once. Her brother opened the door in his hooded cloak, boots already laced, as if he had been waiting for a reason to be awake. "Blueberry," he said. He looked at the cloth in her hand. "Show me." She set the berry on his table. He bent over it without touching it. He turned the lamp closer. He studied the round bruise for a long time. "Pressure," he said. "Not a bite. Something leaned on it after it left the vine." He straightened. "You found this where?" "On my step. No tracks." "Then it wants you to know it can reach the door." He said it the way he said the weather. "A bolt won't stop that." "I know." He went to a shelf and took down a small clay jar. "Salt-ash. I keep it for the roots." He set it beside the berry. "Lay a line across every threshold. Windows too. It won't cross a clean line while the line holds." "How long does it hold?" "One night. Maybe two if the air stays dry." She looked at the jar. It was not much. "And after that?" "You lay it again. Every night. Until we know what it is." He paused. He did not soften it. "You won't sleep well. But it won't come inside." She carried the jar back through the rows in the last of the light. At her door she knelt and poured a thin gray line along the threshold. She did the same at the window sill and the back step. Her hands were steady. The line was straight. She went inside and bolted the door. She sat by the window with the lamp low and watched the field. Near the middle of the night, she heard the dragging in the east rows. It came closer than before. It reached the edge of the garden path. Then it stopped. She held her breath. The dragging did not move. It waited. After a long while it drew back into the rows and was gone. At dawn she checked the line. It was scuffed at one end, as if something had tested it and pulled away. The door was untouched. Nothing sat on the step. She had bought a night. She would need to buy the next one, and the one after, until she found what was leaning on her field.

By morning the clay jar was almost empty. Blueberry Shroomy tipped it against her palm and watched the last of the gray dust settle in a thin crescent. One threshold's worth. Maybe two if she was careful. The creature had tested the line last night and pulled back. It would come again. She needed more salt-ash before dark. She walked the field path north back to her house at the low end of the slope. The blue cap was still beaded with damp. She opened the door. Her partner, Blueberry Shroom was just coming down the stairs, in his cloak, and looked at the jar in her hand. "Empty," he said. "Almost." He stepped back and went to the shelf where the clay jar had come from. He lifted a second jar, smaller, and set it on the table. He turned it upside down. A spoonful of gray dust fell out. "That's what I have," he said. She looked at the little pile. It was not enough for one threshold, let alone three. "Where does it come from?" "The root pit behind the far rows. I burn the trimmings and sift the ash through salt. It takes a week." "I don't have a week." "I know." He did not soften it. "You have tonight." She sat down. She put her hands flat on the table. She thought about the dragging at the edge of the garden path. She thought about the berry on her step. "Then I burn some today," she said. "Show me." He took her to the pit behind the house. He showed her the trimmings stacked under an oilcloth. He showed her the sieve and the coarse salt. He lit the pile and stepped back. The smoke went up straight in the still air. "It has to burn down to white," he said. "Not gray. White. Then sift it hot." She stayed by the fire. He brought her water and left her to it. The wood took hours to burn. She fed it and watched it and turned it with a stick. By late afternoon the ash was pale but not white. She sifted what she could. She scraped it into her jar. She held the jar up. It was a quarter full. Enough for the door and one window. Not the back step. Blueberry Shroom came out and looked at it. "Choose the door," he said. "Leave one window shuttered from inside. Nail it if you have to." "And the back step?" "Sit near it. Keep the lamp lit. If it comes, you'll hear it." She carried the jar through the rows. She poured a thin line, thinner than before. She shuttered the back window and drove two nails into the frame. She set the lamp by the back step and sat down beside it. The field went dark. She listened. The jar was empty in her lap.

The lamp burned low by the back step. Blueberry Shroomy sat with her knees pulled up and the empty jar between her feet. The night was cold. She had not slept the night before, or the one before that. Her eyes stung. She pressed her thumbs against them and made herself count the rows she could see in the lamplight. One. Two. Three. The dragging did not come. That was worse. It meant the creature was waiting for her to fail. She stood and walked a slow circle around the blue cap of her cottage. The salt-ash line at the front door was clean and thin. The shuttered window was nailed tight. The back step had nothing across it but her lamp and her body. She sat back down. Her chin dropped once. She jerked upright and slapped her own cheek. Something moved in the rows. Not a drag this time. A small, quick rustle, low to the ground. She lifted the lamp. A round shape stepped out between two bushes on stubby legs. A berry with leaves for a crown and a thin brown stem for a leg. It blinked up at her with wet dark eyes and made a soft chirp. She did not move. It was not the thing that had bruised her berries. It was too small, too bright, too alive. It waddled to the edge of her lamp's ring and sat down in the dirt as if it had come to keep her company. It chirped again and pointed one tiny leaf toward the dark row behind it. Blueberry Shroomy turned her head. The evil sprite was already on the step. It had come around the side of the house while she watched the sprout. Deep blue skin, yellow eyes, a mouth full of small teeth. It stood on the wood plank inches from her lamp. No salt-ash between them. It had won the step. She did not scream. She reached into her lap and lifted the empty clay jar. She swung it hard. The jar struck the sprite across the face and shattered. The creature shrieked and fell backward off the step into the dirt. The sprout chirped and stamped its little leg. Blueberry Shroomy grabbed the lamp and threw it. Oil splashed across the sprite's chest and caught. The creature rolled, howled, and bolted into the rows, a small fire running low through her bushes. She stood in the dark. Two blueberry bushes were burning. The sprout tugged at her hem with a leaf. She ran for the water barrel. By the time she beat the fire out with a wet sack, four rows were scorched black. The sprite was gone. The sprout sat by the back step where she had sat, watching her, waiting. She had kept the creature out of her house. She had lost part of her field to do it.