Celestia Threadwhisper's thread snapped for the third time that morning, and the broken end curled back and stung her wrist. She hovered at the chasm's edge with her spindle still spinning in one hand. Below her, mist swallowed a drop no fairy had crossed in a hundred years. On the far side, the sundered clans lit their cook-fires and did not look up. She had promised them a bridge. Her blue hair stuck to her cheek with sweat, and her green eyes tracked the fresh silver line she had just laid. It sagged in the middle, thinned, and popped like a wet hair. She landed on the lip of stone and sat down hard. Plain moth-silk was the strongest fiber she knew, and plain moth-silk wasn't enough. A span this wide needed a thread that could hold its own weight before it ever held a fairy's. She had spun through two nights and burned through half a season's cocoons. Every attempt broke at the same place. "You're going to spin your fingers off." Lysander Brightwind landed beside her, blond hair wind-tossed, a satchel over one shoulder. He was the ally who had shared her shed through the blight-wind, and he read her face the way he read weather. He crouched and picked up the snapped end. "Too thin." "I know it's too thin." "Then stop spinning it thinner." He opened the satchel. Inside lay a cluster of pale pink daisies, roots and all, their petals fat with sap. "I pulled these from the low meadow. The stems don't tear. I tried." He snapped a stem to show her. It bent, flattened, refused to break. Celestia took one. She rolled the stem between her fingers and felt the wet fiber inside. Not silk. Something tougher, greener, alive. An idea moved through her the way a shuttle moves through a loom. "Bring me all of them," she said. "And bring the moth." He went. She worked. She stripped the stems down to their inner threads and fed them into her spindle alongside the moth-silk, two fibers twisting into one. The plant core gave the silk a spine. The silk gave the plant a skin. When Lysander returned leading the giant silk moth on a tether, she looped the new thread around one of its legs and pulled with both hands. The moth shifted its weight. The thread held. She yanked harder. It held. She laughed once, sharp, surprised. Then she looked across the chasm and her laugh died. The new thread was strong. It was also heavy, and green, and slow to spin. At her best pace, one span would take a month. On the far cliff, a child from the sundered clans stood at the edge and waved. Behind her, downwind, the air had begun to smell of smoke.

By the next morning, Celestia's hands would not close. The composite thread had chewed through her palms overnight. Every time she gripped the spindle, the green fibers cut back into the same raw grooves, and the moth-silk stuck to the blood and pulled the skin open again. She had spun for an hour past dawn. She had laid four inches of bridge thread. Then the spindle slipped, and she sat on the stone with her hands turned up, shaking. Lysander landed beside her and looked at her palms. He did not touch them. "Stop," he said. "I can't stop. The child is still there." "You'll lose the hands." He turned toward the tree line and whistled twice, high and short. "I sent for a healer yesterday. She's close." The healer came through the ferns a moment later, golden robe dragging, pointed hat tipped back. Aurelia Goldenwing knelt on the stone and set down her bag. She lifted Celestia's right hand and turned it to the light. "Torn to the second layer," Aurelia said. "Both palms. You spin again today, you scar shut. You lose the grip for good." "How long?" "Six days wrapped. No spindle. No thread." Celestia looked across the chasm. The child on the far cliff was sitting now, knees pulled up. Six days was six days the gap would keep widening. Six days of thread she would not spin. "I don't have six days," Celestia said. "Then you don't have hands." Aurelia opened a tin of pale salve and began to work it into the wounds. She did not look up. "Pick." A rustle behind them. Lyra Threadwing stepped out from the ferns, green hair tucked behind her ears, her own patched robe knotted at the waist. She was the apprentice weaver who had spun composite thread through the blight, the one whose small successes she still did not trust. She held her hands behind her back like a child brought to a door she had not knocked on. "I heard," Lyra said. "From Lysander. I can spin it. The composite. I've done it before." "Bridge thread is heavier," Celestia said. "The twist is different. It fights you." "Show me the twist. I'll practice on scrap until I get it. Then I spin while you heal." Celestia studied her. Lyra's hands were steady. Her own were not. "Sit," Celestia said. "Bring the spindle here. I'll teach you the twist from the ground." Aurelia wrapped the first palm in linen and tied it off tight. Lysander went to the shed and came back with the spindle and a coil of green stem and silver silk. Celestia guided Lyra's fingers through the first turn, then the second, talking through wrapped hands. By noon, Lyra had spun a clean inch of bridge thread. Celestia sat back against the stone, hands bound, and watched someone else spin her bridge.

By afternoon, Lyra had spun a full foot of bridge thread. She had it coiled in her lap, her fingers still working the twist. Celestia sat against the stone with her wrapped hands in her lap and watched the far cliff. The child had stopped sitting. He was standing at the edge now, and the edge was closer to him than it had been at dawn. A thin crack ran across the ledge behind his heels. "The ledge is going," Celestia said. Lysander followed her look. He did not answer for a moment. "Two days. Maybe less." "We don't have two days of spinning left in her hands either." Celestia lifted her chin toward Lyra. "And the thread has nothing to tie to on the far side. Even if she finishes a span, we can't throw it across. It's too heavy. It'll drop." Lyra kept spinning. "I thought of that. I don't have an answer." Aurelia knelt by her bag, sorting salve tins. She spoke without looking up. "You need something to carry the first line. Something light. Something that flies." Celestia turned her head. "A bird won't hold a line in the updraft." "Not a bird." Aurelia closed the tin. "A moth." Lysander stood. "The silver ones nest under my grotto eaves. Small. Strong wings. They fly to light." "How many?" "Four or five. I can bring one." "Bring two," Celestia said. He was gone before she finished. Lyra kept spinning. Celestia looked at her wrapped hands and made herself think through the next step instead of the pain. "A single strand," Celestia said. "Thinnest you can pull. Not bridge weight. A guide line. The moth carries it across. We tie it to the anchor stone on the far side, then use it to pull the bridge thread over." Lyra's fingers slowed. "The anchor stone. On the far side. Who ties it?" The child on the far cliff was watching them now. "He does," Celestia said. Lysander came back through the ferns with the moth cupped in both hands. Its wings were the color of wet stone and moved without sound. He opened his palms and the moth sat there, waiting. Celestia guided Lyra through the guide strand with her bandaged fingertips. Lyra pulled it thin as a hair. They knotted one end to the moth's back leg with a slipknot Celestia's mother had taught her for lures. Then Lysander lifted the moth toward the far cliff and let go. The moth flew straight. It landed on the child's shoulder. He did not move. He listened to Celestia call across the gap, slow and clear, and he untied the knot with small careful fingers and pressed the strand into a split in the anchor stone and wedged it with a pebble. The guide line held. Lyra lifted the spindle and started the bridge thread again. This time it had somewhere to go.

By morning the guide line had sagged. It dipped low over the chasm, close enough that the updraft plucked at it. Celestia stood at the edge and watched it swing. Lyra sat behind her with the half-spun bridge thread across her knees. The child on the far cliff had backed away from the edge, but the crack behind him had opened wider in the night. "We can't run the bridge thread on that," Celestia said. "It'll drag the guide down into the gap before we're halfway across." Lysander crouched beside her. He tested the guide with two fingers. "It needs lift. And tension. From both sides." "He can't pull it from over there. He's a child. He'll snap it or fall." "Then we lift it from here." Aldric came up the path in his gossamer robe, leaning on a peeled stick. He was the grove's oldest scholar, and Celestia had not asked him to come. He looked at the sagging line and did not speak for a long moment. When he did, it was flat. "You need weight on this side and a hand you trust on that side. The child is the hand. The weight is the problem." "We have no anchor stone here," Celestia said. "Only root and soil." "Then buy one." Aldric tipped his chin down the slope. Grendok was already climbing toward them, a short stocky troll with a chisel through his belt. He did not greet anyone. He looked at the line, the lip of the chasm, and the loose soil, in that order. "What's the pay?" Grendok said. "Moth-silk scraps," Lysander said. "All we have left." Grendok grunted. "Show me the edge." He knelt and pressed his palm to the rock beneath the soil. He worked his fingers along a seam Celestia had not seen. Then he drew the chisel and cut. Three strikes. A block of granite came loose the size of his chest. He rolled it back from the lip and drove an iron pin through a natural crack in the top. "Tie here," he said. Celestia guided Lyra's hands. They looped the guide line around the pin and drew it tight. Aldric called across the gap, slow and clear, and the child braced his small weight against the anchor stone on his side and pulled. The line rose. It stopped sagging. It hummed. Lyra lifted the bridge thread and fed it onto the guide, hand over hand, letting the taut line carry the weight. The bridge thread crept across the chasm. Halfway across, the ledge behind the child gave. A slab the size of a door broke off and fell. The child scrambled back onto solid rock, still holding the anchor pebble in place. But the anchor stone shifted an inch toward the new edge. "It'll hold for now," Grendok said. "Not for long."

The bridge thread lay finished across the gap, thin as a hair and shaking in the updraft. On the far side, the child pressed his back to the rock. The ledge under his feet had shrunk to the width of two hands. A pebble broke loose beneath his heel and fell without a sound Celestia could hear. "He has to come now," Celestia said. "The thread won't hold him if he waits." Lysander stood beside her at the anchor stone. He had not spoken in an hour. "He can't walk it. He's too small. He'll slip." "Then we carry him." She turned to Lysander. "Your unicorn." Lysander looked at her. "She won't cross a thread." "She doesn't have to cross. She has to pull." Lysander went down the path and came back leading the unicorn by her pink mane. The mare stopped at the lip and would not go closer. Celestia unwound a loop from the guide line and tied it to the mare's harness. She fed a second strand across the chasm, wrapped in a sling of her own weaving. "Thistledown," Celestia said. She had not planned to use the boy. He stood at her elbow, silver shirt marked with soot, watching the far cliff. He was groundbound. His wings shook but did not lift him. He had come up the path behind Lysander without asking. "I can call to him," Thistledown said. "He'll listen to a child." Celestia knelt. "Tell him to put his arms through the sling and hold. Not to look down. Tell him the horse will do the pulling." Thistledown walked to the edge. He cupped his hands and shouted across, plain and short. The child on the far ledge nodded once. He caught the sling on the second cast and worked his arms through it. "Now," Celestia said. Lysander led the unicorn back from the lip, one slow step at a time. The guide line sang. The sling lifted the child off the ledge. Behind him, the last of the rock gave way and dropped into the chasm. He swung out over open air, small and quiet, both hands locked on the woven cord. The thread held. The unicorn walked. The child came across in a long, shaking arc and landed hard on Celestia's side of the gap. Thistledown caught his sleeve and pulled him back from the edge. The guide line snapped a moment later. It whipped back across the chasm and tore a red line down Celestia's forearm. She barely felt it. The child sat on the moss and shook. He was from the far clan. Celestia looked at him and understood that the bridge she had been spinning was gone with the ledge. There was nothing left to anchor to on the far side. The clans were still cut apart. But one of their children was here, breathing, on her ground.

The rescued child slept in the moss under a blanket Lysander had folded twice. Celestia sat by the anchor stone and watched the far cliff. The ledge where the boy had stood was gone. The stone she had spent weeks working toward was gone with it. Any thread she cast now would find nothing to hold. It would fall into the chasm like a dropped ribbon. "We need a new anchor over there," she said. "Something the far clan can secure. Something we can send across without a fairy on the other side." Lysander crouched beside her. "Nothing left to tie to. The rock face above the old ledge is smooth. I looked." "Then we make the anchor. We send it." She sent Thistle down the path to fetch Aria Threadweaver. Aria came within the hour. She was a master spinner who worked alone by choice. Celestia had asked her for help twice before and been turned down both times. Aria's rainbow hair was pinned back with a splinter of bone. She looked at the chasm once and did not look again. "Show me the far wall," Aria said. Celestia pointed. "Smooth stone. No ledge. No crack we can reach." "Then you don't tie. You drive." She sent Thistle back down the path for Grendok. The troll came up slower, wiping grit from his hands. He had cut the anchor stone on this side a week ago and been paid in moth-silk scraps. He did not look pleased to be called again. "No stone to cut," Grendok said. "You said so yourself." "We want you to drive an iron pin into the far wall," Celestia said. "From here." Grendok stared at her. "Across the gap." "Aria will spin a launch cord. You weight the pin. We cast it." "Once," Grendok said. "I throw once. Then I go home." Aria spun through the afternoon. Her thread came off the spindle even and bright, and it did not fray when Celestia tested it against the anchor stone. Grendok shaped a short iron pin with barbs cut backward along the shaft. He tied Aria's cord to the eye of it and hefted the weight in his palm. He threw. The pin crossed the chasm and struck the far wall with a flat crack. It skidded, caught, and held. Grendok pulled the cord tight. The barbs bit deeper into the stone. "Set," Grendok said. He dropped the cord in Celestia's hands and walked back down the path without another word. Celestia wound the cord around the anchor stone twice and knotted it. The line ran taut across the gap for the first time since the guide had snapped. She had her far anchor. Then she saw the pin shift. A fine crack ran out from the iron, pale against the darker rock, and it was growing.