Charlotte Bushapple danced in the orchards before dawn, and the cold fog danced back instead of the thing she wanted. She was a musician who built songs no label would touch. One gatekeeper called her sound a film score having a breakdown. So she left the town and came here, to the misty trees, with a plan older labels couldn't ruin. An ancient spirit slept beneath these roots. If her feet found the right ground, her dancing would wake it, and the spirit would finally hear a sound that never resolved. But she didn't know where it slept. She spun down one row, then another. Her red shoes left wet prints in the grass. Runes glowed faint along their sides with every step. The fog thickened and swallowed her ankles. Nothing stirred under the roots. She stopped, out of breath, and kicked a fallen apple. "Wrong spot," she said. "Again." A figure stood between two trees. He was pale blue and see-through, broad as a stump, with a white beard and eyes like coals. His hand kept closing on empty air, reaching for something that wasn't there. Charlotte went still. She had met no one out here. The ghost's gaze dropped to her feet. "Those shoes," Aldric said. "Where." "I made them. Why?" "The runes point." He stepped closer. The fog thinned where he moved. "Not for walking. For finding." Charlotte looked down. She had thought the glow was decoration. "Finding what?" "What's buried." His fist opened and shut. "I lost my axe. In the ground. I've reached for it every night." He pointed at her shoes. "They lead to buried things. Stand still. Let them pull." She didn't trust him. But she had wasted hours on cold fog. She planted her feet and stopped forcing the dance. She let the shoes do what they wanted. The left shoe tugged. Then the right. The runes brightened. Her feet slid sideways, past the row she'd worked all night, toward a low rise where the fog hung thickest. Aldric followed, close, hungry. The shoes stopped over a patch of bare dirt. The glow pulsed hot. Under her soles the ground was warm. Something breathed below it, slow and huge. Charlotte felt it in her teeth. "Here," she whispered. "It's here." She danced. Not in circles now, but on the one spot, hard, her heels striking the warm earth. The ground shivered. A crack opened. Pale light leaked up through the roots. A sound came with it, low and wrong, a note that bent and would not settle. Her note. The spirit was waking. Aldric grabbed her arm. His grip was cold and real. "My axe is down there too," he said. "You woke more than the spirit. Now we both have to go in."