Glimmer Shellsworth counted to four before her light went out again. Four seconds. That was all she had now without the pin on her back. The crow had snatched it six mornings ago, mistaking the silver for a bead. Without it, her light couldn't hold, and without her light, she couldn't grow. She was supposed to be huge one day. Guardian-huge. The oldest grove in Copsefire was waiting for her, and she was the size of a thumbnail, blinking on and off like a bad match. She crawled out of the brick shell she called home. Her cousins watched from the doorway in their knitted hats, too small to help, too worried to speak. Glimmer didn't look back. Three fields east. She had watched the crow fly that route four mornings before he robbed her. She knew where his nest sat. She reached the first field by noon. A vine-covered stone wall broke the wind, and she rested against it, flashing on for a second, off for longer. A moth had cracked its head against her window fourteen times the night she went dark. She kept counting those dents in her head like a debt. By the second field, a pink butterfly dropped down beside her. It had been circling, lost. Glimmer flared her light. Four seconds. The butterfly steadied, found its heading, and lifted away toward a patch of wildflowers glowing faintly at the edge of the row. Even broken, she still worked. That was almost worse. The third field ended at a low pine. The crow's nest sat in the crook, and the crow sat in the nest, asleep, one foot curled over her pin. Glimmer climbed. Bark. Bark. Bark. Her legs shook. She reached the rim and saw the silver poking from under the black claw. She pulled. The crow's foot shifted. She pulled again. The pin slid free. Then something moved behind her, and it wasn't the crow. A dragon the size of a fist blinked at her from the next branch. Pink. Round. Sugar-eyed. It smiled the way a cat smiles at a beetle. "Pretty," it said, and reached. Glimmer clamped the pin to her back. Her light snapped on, steady now, wide and clean, the way it used to be. The crow woke. The dragon's small pink hand was already closing. She jumped. She fell through pine needles, light streaming behind her, and hit the moss below still lit. The pin held. She was whole again. Above her, the crow shrieked at the little dragon, and the little dragon shrieked back, and something wooden in the nest cracked. Glimmer ran. Her light carried three feet ahead of her now, real and warm. Behind her, the dragon's voice rose into the trees, closer than the crow, and getting closer. She had her pin. She had a new hunter.