Bram Gully wanted to break a tree on purpose, but his power only came when he was afraid. He stood behind the leaning cottage where he lived, a damp place with moss on its shingles and mud sucking at its sunken porch. He had dragged a dead birch upright and propped it against the wall. If he could crack that trunk without panicking, he could learn to control the splitting. And if he controlled it, maybe he could finally speak out loud without the fear choking his voice down to a whisper. He planted his feet in the wet ground. "Break," he whispered. The tree did nothing. He tried again, louder, until his throat hurt. Still nothing. His power slept when he was calm. It only woke when something scared him. So Bram made himself afraid. He thought of the whispers at school. He thought of the thing he sometimes saw in the fen at dusk, a tall shape with no face, standing in the reeds and watching him. His chest tightened. His hands shook. The birch groaned. A long crack ran up its trunk. Bram's heart leapt, but the fear kept building on its own now, faster than he could stop it. The crack widened. The whole tree split down the middle with a sound like a gunshot. He did not move fast enough. Half the trunk peeled away from the wall and fell toward him. Bram threw up his arms. The wood struck his shoulder and knocked him flat into the mud. Pain shot down his arm. He lay there, gasping, pinned under the heavy broken limb. He had done it. He had made the tree break. But he had done it by panicking, and the panic had no brakes. The lesson was useless. He could not practice a power that hurt him every time it worked. He needed a trigger he could switch on and off, not a flood of terror that never knew when to stop. Bram wriggled free and sat up in the muck. Then he saw it, hanging from the eave above where the birch had stood. A thick vine clung to the rotten wood, its dark stems twisting, its leaves streaked with black veins like cracks. The falling tree had torn it loose, and now it swayed toward him. One tendril brushed his neck and tightened. His breath stopped. The vine was alive, and it was pulling. His fear spiked, pure and sharp. Every tree at the edge of the yard shuddered at once. Bark burst. Branches rained down around him. Bram clawed the vine off his throat and scrambled back against the cottage wall. The vine hung still again, patient. He understood now. His fear worked. It always worked. But something in this swamp wanted him afraid, and it had just learned exactly how to feed the thing inside him.