Garrett Thornfield counted his snares at dawn, and three were gone. Not sprung. Gone. He knelt in the frost and touched the empty stakes. Someone had lifted the whole line clean. For two years he had guarded this forest against poachers, sure a hidden spy ran the whole operation. Now he had proof, and it made no sense. His cabin watched him from the ridge. The old pinewood was studded with eyes, dozens of them, blinking along the timbers. He trusted those eyes more than any person. They had seen something in the night. He climbed to the porch and pressed his hand to the wall. The eyes all rolled left, toward the tree line. Garrett followed them. Past the snow-heavy pines, pink and purple tentacles curled from the drifts, twitching like they smelled him coming. He stepped around them. Behind the grove stood a thing that had not been there yesterday. An archway of black stone, humming low, the air inside it rippling like heat. It buzzed. The sound crawled into his teeth. He pulled his notebook and sketched it fast. Then he saw the tracks. Small paw prints, in and out of the arch, dozens of trips. He crouched and waited behind a trunk. A raccoon trotted from the buzzing arch. It wore a bowtie. Its tail curled up like a spring, and its nose pointed at the sky. In its arms it carried one of Garrett's stolen snares. It saw him and did not run. "You're the one who's supposed to catch things," the raccoon said. "Slow morning?" Garrett's hand went to his knife. "You've been robbing my forest." "Borrowing." The raccoon set the snare down neatly. "The management pays well for local goods. You'd be surprised what sells on the other side." "What management?" Garrett stepped closer. "Who runs this?" The raccoon only grinned. Then it turned and darted through the archway. Garrett lunged and caught the bowtie in his fist. The buzzing spiked. Light swallowed them both. He landed hard on ice. Cold soaked through his gear. He was inside a stone chamber under water, its walls hung with icicles. Shelves rose around him, packed with frozen bundles, sacks, chests, and small crates. His stolen belongings sat among them, sealed in ice. Someone had been stockpiling for a long time. A tiny figure lifted off a high shelf. A fairy, no bigger than his hand, black hair streaming, wings dripping dark slime that hissed on the ice. She hovered before his face, smiling. "The ranger, at last," she said. "You've cost my couriers three routes this season." Garrett stared. Here was his spy. Not a man in the shadows. A fairy running a cache beneath his own woods. The raccoon climbed a shelf and waved. "Told you it sells." The fairy's smile thinned. "Now you've seen the storehouse. I can't very well let you swim home." The icicles above Garrett began to crack.