Grunk had six days until the full moon, and no ground to sleep on. For 312 years the Deepwood had held him. Then he moved one root to save a mole burrow, and the forest cast him out. The burrow flooded anyway. The seventh litter of moles was never found. Now he wanted more than the Deepwood back. He wanted the old grove his tribe lost generations ago, the one no living troll had walked. But a troll who cannot rest cannot march, and Grunk had not slept longer than two hours since the forest turned on him. He walked the cold ridge until dawn, testing every hollow. Each one belonged to something. Frost had crusted his braided beard. His red Mohawk drooped flat with wet. He needed a den, any den, a patch of stone that would not throw him out at nightfall. Then he smelled old smoke and cold earth. A cave squatted in the slope, half-swallowed by roots. Stones jutted at its mouth like teeth. Grunk ducked under the tangle and felt the dry floor. Shelter. His knees nearly gave. "Taken," said a voice from the dark. Grunk froze. A mountain troll sat against the far wall, white hair wild, yellow eyes fixed on him. Moss grew up one arm. His feet did not move. They looked wrong, gray and hard as the floor. "Thrum," the old troll said. "I have watched this valley a long time." He did not offer his hand. "You are the one the Deepwood spat out." Grunk's throat tightened. "Word travels." "Trees talk." Thrum studied him. "You want back in before the moon fills." "I want more than that now." Grunk crouched, too tired to lie. "My tribe had a grove once. They were driven off. I mean to take it back. But I cannot plan anything standing up in the rain." Thrum was quiet. Then he looked down at his own feet. "Mine are turning to stone," he said, plain as weather. "Sat too long. Watched too long. Now I cannot stand." Grunk understood the trade before Thrum named it. "Stay," Thrum said. "Sleep. The cave is warm and no forest owns it. In return, help me stand before the rest of me sets." Grunk looked at the dry floor, the low roof, the roots holding out the wind. He had not chosen to help anyone in six months. Helping had cost him everything. But he could not walk another night. "Done," Grunk said. He lay against the wall and slept. Not two hours. All day and into dark, deeper than he had slept since the banishment. When he woke, his head was clear for the first time. He had a roof. He had a partner who could not run away. He also had a debt. He had promised to lift a troll whose legs were already stone, and he did not yet know how.

Grunk woke rested, but the debt waited. He crouched by Thrum's feet and studied them. Gray stone, cold as the floor, fused to the rock beneath. He pushed. Nothing gave. He wedged his shoulder under one leg and heaved until his back burned. The old troll did not move an inch. "Feet are set," Thrum said. "You cannot lift stone with more stone." Grunk sat back, breathing hard. Brute force had failed. He needed to know how deep the stone went, and whether anything could soften it. He thought of the moles, of roots and water and patience. "I need to see what stone does to a troll," he said. "Before it takes all of you." Thrum was quiet a long moment. "Down the slope," he said. "Where the old ones went to sit. They never got up." Grunk went. Below the cave, in a hollow of dead grass, he found them. Troll bones, huge and yellow, stacked where the giants had settled. Cracked ribs leaned like fence posts. Skulls watched from the weeds. The legs were worst. Every one ended in a lump of gray stone, still fixed to the ground where the troll had died sitting. He knelt by the nearest. He worked his fingers into the seam where bone met stone. The stone was not solid all through. Near the surface it flaked, thin and brittle, like old bark. Water had gotten under it over years and split it. That was the trick. Not more force. Water and time, working from the edge in. Grunk came back at dusk. A forest troll waited at the cave mouth, moss and twigs woven into his hair. Groof. He carried a skin of water and set it down without a word. "Thrum sent word through the trees," Groof said. "Said a stubborn one needed hands." Grunk did not ask how a still troll sent word. He poured water along the seam of Thrum's right foot. Then he wedged a splintered rib bone into the crack and tapped it. Groof leaned his weight beside him. They worked slow, wetting and prying, wetting and prying. A flake broke loose. Then another. The stone shell cracked open. Beneath it Thrum's foot was gray but soft, the flesh half turned. Grunk pulled the shell away in pieces. He did the left foot the same way. It took until moonrise. Thrum planted both feet on the floor. He pushed against the wall. He rose, swaying, for the first time in years. His legs shook and would not yet hold a step. But he stood. "Debt paid," Thrum said. Then he looked down at his trembling legs, and quieter: "Cannot walk. Not yet." Grunk had his safe place to sleep. He also had a standing troll who could not march, and a full moon now risen in the cold sky.

The full moon hung white over the trees. Grunk stared at it from the cave mouth. His debt to Thrum was paid, but his own time was gone. He had until this moon to find his way back into the Deepwood. He did not even know where the ancestral grove lay, the old troll ground his tribe had lost. The moon was climbing. Soon the Deepwood would seal itself and never let him in. He turned back inside. Thrum stood against the wall, legs shaking, feet freed of stone. Groof crouched by the fire, wringing water from the empty skin. Grunk knelt in the dirt and pressed his palms flat, the way he once read roots near the burrow. He felt for the Deepwood's pull. Nothing answered. He had lost it. "It closes tonight," Grunk said. "And I don't know where to go. My tribe's grove is gone from me. I never saw it. Only heard the old ones name it." Thrum watched the fire. He spoke without turning. "The grove your tribe lost. I watched it burn." Grunk froze. "You saw it?" "From the mountain. Long ago. Smoke came up through the Deepwood, north side, where three streams meet." Thrum's voice dropped, flat and final. "I told myself it was lightning. I stayed put." Groof set down the water skin. "Three streams. I know that place. Under the old bridge water, upstream. Mosswood folk called it dead ground. Nothing grows there now." Grunk stood. His heart pounded. The grove was real, and it had a place. "How far?" "Half a night's walk," Groof said. "You won't make it before the moon tops the trees." Grunk looked at the moon through the cave mouth. It had nearly cleared the branches. He could run. He could reach three streams by dawn, maybe. But not before the Deepwood sealed. He pressed his palms to the ground one last time and shut his eyes. For a breath he felt it, thin as a thread. The pull. It came from the north, from the running water. Then it snapped shut, like a root cut through. The cold left his hands. The moon cleared the trees. Grunk knelt in the dirt and did not move. The way back was closed. He would not feel the Deepwood again. But he knew now where the grove lay. Three streams, north side, dead ground where nothing grew. "It's gone," Grunk said. "The Deepwood's shut to me." He rose slowly. "But I know the grove. I know where my tribe's ground is." Thrum met his eyes. "You can't enter the Deepwood. But the grove sits at its edge. Streams run out, not in." Grunk understood. He could not reach the grove through the forest. He would reach it from outside, along the water. The dead ground was waiting. His tribe's stolen home had a place on the earth again, and a path to it that did not need the Deepwood at all.