Hozier knelt in the peat and pressed his palm flat to the wet ground. He was trying to teach Florence how to listen the way the bog had taught him. He had come back from the water wearing moss and dark wool, remembering her face but not the song she used to pull him up. He owed her a lesson worth the price she paid. If he could show her how to root love-magic in the earth, she would carry that power long past her mortal years, and he would leave her something that outlasted him. Florence sat across from him in her yellow dress, daffodils bright in her red hair. Her hut stood behind her, thatch dark from morning rain, herbs strung along the eaves. She placed her hand beside his in the muck without flinching. "Close your eyes," he said. "Listen for the small voices first." She closed them. He closed his. But the earth was wrong today. Beneath the usual hum, Hozier heard whispering he did not know. A woman's name, spoken like a question. His own name, spoken like a claim. He opened his eyes. At the pond's edge, three shapes crouched among the reeds. The bog hags. Moss dripped from their arms. They grinned at him with wet teeth. "Keep listening," he told Florence. He stood. "I'll be a moment." He walked to the hags alone. They knew him. They had watched Florence sing him up. "Who's been asking after us," he said. The tallest hag tilted her head. "A winged one. Purple as a bruise. She wants the bog man for her bed and the witch off her map." "The Leanan Sidhe," the smallest said, delighted he did not know. "She feeds on lovers. She empties them." "And she does not come alone," the third said. "Her runner sniffed the reeds last night. Shadow-shaped. Eyes like coals." Hozier went cold under his peat. He knew that runner. He had ridden it once and paid with his life. "The Puca," he said. The hags nodded together. He looked back at Florence. She sat with her eyes still shut, hand in the mud, trusting him to teach her. The unseen thing that had been watching the bog now had a name, and a partner, and a want. He could not train her here while both of them circled. He returned and knelt again. He took her muddy hand in his. "Open your eyes," he said. "We stop for today." "I almost had it." "I know." He kept his voice level. "Something is here that shouldn't be. A fae woman. And the horse that killed me." Florence's face did not move. She looked once at the reeds. Then she stood, pulled him up, and walked him inside her hut. She barred the door behind them. "Let them try," she said.

Florence sat with her back to the barred door. Her hands would not stop moving. She twisted a length of yellow ribbon around her fingers until the tips went white. Hozier watched her from across the small room. She had said let them try, but the salt line at her threshold was already a cage to her now, not a shield. He could feel her fear pulling at the wet earth under the floorboards. If he opened a lesson here, her fear would climb into the magic and rot it before it took root. He needed her out of this hut. He needed her steady. "Come with me," he said. "There's someone you should meet." She looked up. "You said we stop." "We stop the lesson. Not the day." He held out his hand. "He's a friend. He lives past the cherry trees. You'll be safer near him than behind this door." She stared at his palm. Then she stood and took it. They walked the long way, keeping to the high peat where the water ran clear. The cottage sat where the bog softened into orchard, stone walls sunk deep, cherry blossoms heavy over the roof. Hozier knocked once. The door opened before his knuckles left the wood. Alex filled the doorway. Tall, quiet, dark feathers soft along his shoulders like a scarf he'd forgotten to take off. He looked at Hozier the way a brother looks at a brother who has been gone too long. He did not speak. He only stepped aside. "This is Florence," Hozier said. "The one who sang me up." Alex looked at her. He nodded once. "Come in." Inside smelled of yew wood and old tea. A bass leaned against the hearth, dark grain, thick strings. Florence stopped a step past the threshold, ribbon still knotted in her fist. Hozier put a hand at Alex's elbow. "She's rattled," he said, low. "The fae woman is close. I can't teach her while she's like this. Give her roots. Please. The bog will need us both, and we can't stay in a circle." Alex studied Florence for a long moment. Then he crossed to the hearth and lifted the bass. He carried it to the bench under the arbor out back, where vines twined the timbers and a fiddle rested on the seat. He sat. He set his hand on the low string and pulled. One note. Deep enough to feel in the floorboards. Florence's shoulders dropped. The ribbon slipped from her fingers. He played another. Then another, slow, no melody yet, only pulse. Hozier lifted the fiddle. He waited until his own hands stopped shaking. Then he laid the bow across the strings and answered. Florence stepped out under the arbor. She sat on the moss at Alex's feet. She closed her eyes and breathed with the note. When Hozier looked at her again, her hands were open in her lap. The fear had gone out of them. The lesson could begin.

The next morning Hozier brought Florence back to the arbor bench. The vines had grown a finger's width overnight. He set the fiddle across his knee and laid a strip of wet peat on the wood between them. This was the day's lesson. Feel the water in the moss. Pull the warmth up through it without breaking the strands. She bent her head over the peat and hummed low. The moss darkened where her breath touched it. A green shoot pushed up from the strip, thin as a hair. "Good," Hozier said. "Now hold it." A snicker came from the ferns behind the arbor. Then another, higher. Then a third that broke into a wet laugh. Three shapes crouched at the edge of the moss, gray-skinned and grinning, twigs stuck through their hair. The bog hags. They had been agreed to stay out of sight after the last trouble. They were not out of sight now. "She's pulled a stem," the tallest whispered, loud enough to carry. "Tell the wet ones. Tell the wing ones." "Tell the pretty one at the well," the small one giggled. Florence's hand closed on the peat. The shoot wilted. Hozier stood. Every name they spoke was a door left open. He knew who listened at those doors. The fae woman. Whatever else was still hungry for a witch with rising power. "Enough," he said. "Go." They only grinned wider. Then the trees on the far ridge screamed. Not a voice. A pressure. A wall of dissonant sound punched through the branches, brass and something metal underneath, notes stacked wrong on purpose. The peat under Hozier's feet shook. The hags flinched as one animal. The tallest hissed. They scrambled backward on hands and knees and were gone into the reeds. Florence was already standing. "That was Isa." "Who?" "My anchor. From before the bog." She was moving toward the ridge. "She built a thing. She called it the Machine." They found the cart at the treeline. Layered brass pipes, rune-cut panels, wheels sunk to the axle in wet ground. A woman with copper hair climbed down from the bench, ink black on her fingers, coat mud to the hem. She looked at Florence without smiling. "You have hags," Isa said. "Had," Florence said. "I heard them from the road. Everything for a mile heard them." Isa wiped her hands on her coat. "So I made a louder noise." A crow dropped out of the alders and landed on the top pipe. It cocked its head at Isa, then at Hozier. Its eyes were the wrong color for a bird. Morrígan, in feathers. She had been looking for this cart. "Good," the crow said, in a woman's clipped voice. "Bring it." Hozier looked at Florence. The lesson was over. The hiding was over. Whatever came next would come loud.

Isa pushed the cart down the ridge toward the arbor. The crow flew ahead. Florence walked beside the wheels with one hand on the brass. Hozier followed a step behind. The lesson was over. Something else had started, and he did not yet know its shape. While the cart rolled, Florence broke off toward her drying garden. She said she needed dry wort for the water. Isa nodded and kept pushing. Hozier watched Florence go. Her shoulders were tight. She had been like that since the hags. In the garden, Florence pulled bundles of yellow flower from the shed rail. Her hands were quick and hard. A shadow crossed the row. Isa stood at the gate with her coat over one arm. "You've been afraid," Isa said. "Unsure. Leaning on him for every step. That isn't you." Florence did not look up. "He knows the ground here." "He knows his ground. Not yours." Isa came in and took a bundle from the rail. "I watched you channel through wet peat. That was you. Not him. You've been small on purpose. Stop." Florence's hands stopped. She set the wort down. "He is trying to teach me something that lasts past me. He is careful with it." "Careful is not the same as right." Isa held her gaze. "You will burn out before it takes root. I've seen it." Florence did not answer. She picked the bundle back up. But her hands were steadier now. On the far side of the bog, Hozier knelt by dark water. He had not meant to stop. His hands had found clay at the bank and started working it. He watched them do it. A shape rose under his palms. A wide bowl on thick roots. A hollow shaped for holding weight. He did not know the word for what it was. He knew only that it was for a birth, and that the birth was old, and that he had never been taught this. He sat back. Fear moved in him. He could shape a thing and not know its name. If he taught Florence like this, by feel alone, he would spend her. "You are earth magic," a voice said behind him. "That is why the shape came. But you need words." He turned. A small figure stood at the water's edge, flower crown, green robe, bare feet on the moss. Danu. She had chosen Florence and him as witnesses once. She had not spoken to him alone before. "I have no teacher," he said. "You do now." She stepped onto the moss without sinking. "I will give you the names. You will give her the craft. That is the trade." He bowed his head. "Yes." "Begin tomorrow," Danu said. "Bring her here. Not the arbor." She was gone before he stood. The clay bowl held rainwater already. He pressed his palm to its rim. The obstacle he had carried since the first lesson had lifted. He had a teacher. Florence would have hers.