Errol Stone read her letter twice on the post office porch. Thalia's father would sell her to another man by winter unless Errol paid a price no honest trapper could raise. "How far along is the offering?" she wrote. He folded the paper and looked at the marsh. The answer was one white stag. Its pelt and antlers would clear the debt and buy her freedom in a single sale. He had seen the stag twice. White hide, golden eyes that seemed to weigh him. It moved through the reeds like it knew every snare he set. And that was the trouble. His snares were built for hares and foxes. A stag that size would hit the wire, thrash, and tear loose in seconds. He needed a rig strong enough to hold four hundred pounds of panic. Errol worked through the afternoon at his hidden boat. He cut a young marsh oak and bent it into a spring arm. He braided three lengths of wire into one thick cable. He dug a pit trigger where the deer trails crossed near the water. Then he baited the ground with cut apples and waited in the reeds until dark. The stag came at moonrise. It lowered its head to the apples. Its foreleg pressed the trigger. The oak arm snapped up. The cable cinched tight around the leg and held. The stag screamed and reared. It threw its whole weight backward. The oak groaned but did not break. The braided cable bit deep and stayed. Errol rose from the reeds, heart slamming. The rig had worked. He had it. Then the stag stopped fighting. It turned its golden eyes on him and went still. Errol froze with the rope in his hands. For a moment the animal looked less like meat and more like something that had chosen to stand there. He reached for the killing knife at his belt. A voice cut across the water. "Drop it." Errol spun. An old man stood at the tree line, filthy hands loose at his sides, a forager's satchel across his chest. Errol knew the face. Erasmus Rootwalker had hunted him for weeks, and now he stood ten feet from the greatest prize in the marsh. "That animal isn't yours to take," Erasmus said. He did not shout. He looked at the trapped stag the way a man looks at a wounded friend. "Cut it loose, poacher, and I might let you walk." Errol's fingers tightened on the knife. The stag stood caught between them, alive, worth a fortune, worth Thalia. But the man who wanted him hanged now knew exactly where his boat was hidden. "You'll have to take it," Errol said. Erasmus reached into his satchel and pulled out a small carved horn. He raised it to his lips and blew. The note carried far across the marsh. It was not a call for help. It was a call for something Errol could not see coming.

Errol reached his boat. The hound's bark ripped across the water. He grabbed the pole, then stopped. Even if he crossed, the trackers would follow. The stag was gone across the river, the cable trailing from its neck. His fortune swam free while men closed in behind him. He turned back to Erasmus, and the plan died in his throat. He could not do this alone. "Help me," Errol said. Erasmus stood in the mud, breathing hard. "You dragged that beast by the neck. Now you beg." "I'm not doing this to be cruel." The words came fast. "There's a woman. Thalia. Her father sells her by winter unless I pay a debt I can't pay. The stag was the only way." He wiped blood from his palms. "You know the marsh. You could find a buyer. A sanctuary. Someone who wants it alive. I don't have to kill it. I just need the money." Erasmus went still. The hound bayed. The old man watched the far bank where the white shape had vanished into the reeds. "You'd do anything for her," Erasmus said. It was not a question. "Yes." Something moved behind the old man's eyes. He looked older then, not angry, just tired. "I had a woman once," he said. "Loved her past sense. She died bringing a child into the world. Twenty-seven years back." He stared at Errol's bleeding hands. "I gave the boy away. Couldn't look at him without seeing her go." The trackers were near now. Poles thumped mud. But Erasmus did not move. "Where were you raised, boy?" the old man asked. Errol frowned. "A farm east of the fen. Never knew my parents. Why?" Erasmus did not answer. He stepped closer and looked hard at Errol's face, at the set of his jaw, the shape of him. His filthy hand rose halfway, then stopped. The first tracker broke through the reeds. The hound lunged on its rope, teeth bared, straining for Errol's scent. The man behind it raised a hand. "Hold," Erasmus said. His voice cracked like a whip. The tracker froze. The hound whined and sat. Errol stared. The trackers answered to the old man. All of it, the horn, the hunt, had been his. "This one stays with me," Erasmus told them. "Go find the stag. It went north bank. Follow the cable, not the man." The tracker hesitated, then hauled the hound around. They pushed back into the reeds after the white shape. Erasmus turned back to Errol. His hand shook now. "Twenty-seven years," he said quietly. "Tell me the month you were born." Errol's mouth went dry. He said it. The old man closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were wet. "Then we'll find your buyer," Erasmus said. "Alive. Both of us. There's a woman in this marsh who rescues creatures like that stag. We go to her."