Courtney Calloway had six weeks to find the ghost orchid, and no idea where in the swamp it grew. The research board in Moldbloom had made the terms plain. Bring back one living bloom of the rare orchid, and the permanent post was hers. Fail, and she went home. She stood ankle-deep in black water, clipboard pressed to her chest, and stared at a map that told her nothing. The old survey marked the swamp as one green blur. No wetland pockets. No dry ridges. Nothing to show where an orchid could take root and where it could only drown. She had spent three days wading in circles. Every pocket she found was too flooded or too dry. At this rate she would search random ground until her time ran out. She needed to know the swamp the way it knew itself, and the map could not teach her. A branch cracked behind her. Courtney turned. A lean dog watched her from a fallen log, coat streaked with mud and moss, ribs showing. It had been trailing her camp for two days, stealing scraps. Its nose worked the air without pause. It read the swamp through smell, marking every shift in the ground she could not see. An idea struck her hard enough to sting. She did not need a better map. She needed a nose. She knelt in the water and held out a strip of dried meat. The dog stiffened. "Easy," she said. "I'm no threat. Just desperate." It crept forward, snatched the meat, and retreated. She tried again the next morning, and the next. On the fourth day it ate from her palm and let her touch its wet head. Then came the harder trick. She had one dried petal in her kit, a scrap of the moonflower that shared the orchid's night scent. She let the dog smell it, then walked. When it followed the scent trail she had laid, she fed it. When it wandered, she called it back. Slowly the dog learned that the sweet smell meant food. Amber eyes watched all of it from the reeds. A dark fox sat there each dusk, still as a stone, studying the woman and the dog. Courtney watched it back and wondered what it wanted. It never came closer, and she had no time to learn. On the sixth day she buried the petal under moss forty paces off. The dog lifted its head, tracked the air, and led her straight to it. She dropped to her knees and laughed. The swamp was no longer a blank green blur. She had a nose that could find the orchid's scent anywhere the flower grew. That night the dog whined and pointed north, toward ground Courtney had never crossed. Its ears flattened. Whatever waited out there, the dog did not want to go. And the orchid's scent came from exactly that direction.