Ephrat sat under the oak at the edge of the village and turned the stub of charcoal in his fingers. On the bark of a torn page he had drawn the well, the smith's roof, and the empty square where the carved stone used to sit. His grandfather said the seal meant the village grows but does not forget where it came from. Ephrat meant to remember it back into place. He would map every road out of the village until he found the one the thieves took, and he would be the best map maker Waspwood had ever known. The square on his page kept coming out wrong. He needed a real map to copy, something bigger than the paths he already knew. Then he remembered the old woman two lanes over, hunched at her kitchen table last winter, telling him about a little painted spell she kept in a drawer. A picture, she'd said, that pulled the shape of far countries out of the air. Ephrat had laughed then. He wasn't laughing now. He rolled up his page, tucked the charcoal in his headband, and ran. Her cottage stood behind a low fence, trellis heavy with vine, sunflowers leaning over a stone path. Purple daisies crowded the gate. Ephrat pushed it open and started up the walk. A boy stepped out from the trellis shade and stopped in the middle of the path. He was Ephrat's size. Spiked yellow hair, blue headband, blue leather over orange leggings. Two red katanas, one in each hand, blue sparks crawling around the hilts. Ephrat had never seen him in the village. "Turn around," the boy said. "I need to talk to the old woman inside. Ellelyn. She has a paper I need." "No." "She knows me." "No one goes in." Ephrat took another step. The katana on the left lifted, level with his throat. The sparks along its hilt clicked like a fire catching. Ephrat froze. He had taught himself to fight by watching farmhands and drunks swing at each other behind the tavern. He knew, looking at this boy's shoulders and his quiet feet, that copying wouldn't be enough. "Ellelyn," Ephrat called past him. "It's Ephrat. The spellleaf. The one you told me about." The curtains in the upper window didn't move. No door opened. The boy didn't turn his head. "Go," the boy said. Ephrat backed down the path. At the gate he stopped and looked at the cottage once more, at the shuttered windows and the wind chime hanging still in the porch shadow. Whatever the old woman kept in her drawer, he was not going to walk through that door to get it. He latched the gate behind him. He would need another way in, or another map. He started back toward the oak, already thinking about the roof.