Lunara Silverleaf had six days left before the grove died, and she was spending the first one begging a stranger to tell her where to go. She pressed the silver root fragment into Cassandra Veil's palm. It was the only piece of the wellspring left in the grove after the theft. The rest, stone and water and old magic together, had been carried off in the night while Lunara stood at her sister's wedding rehearsal, promising she would not miss the vows. She had missed them. She had left before dawn with the fragment in her pocket and a note that said only, I have to try. Her sister had told the messenger she understood. The messenger said her sister's voice broke on the word. Cassandra closed her fingers around the fragment. She was small, wrapped in beads and dark robes, and she did not open her eyes. "You know my price," she said. "Name it." "A year of your sight. Not blindness. The green in things. You will see the world, but not the color that tells you it is alive." Lunara thought of the grove. She thought of the moss on the wellspring stones, the light through the summer canopy, her sister's wedding sash. She said yes. Cassandra pressed the fragment to her mouth and hummed once. The silver in Lunara's vision drained first, then the greens, leaf by leaf, until the walls of the ruined temple around them looked like ash. Cassandra opened her eyes. "North," she said. "Three days on foot. A sod cottage packed with snow, half-buried. Two men and a woman. They are bleeding your wellspring into jars. When the jars are full, they will sell them, and the source will be empty stone." She pressed something small and cool into Lunara's other hand. A feather, silver, edged in colors Lunara could no longer see. "This will point while they still hold it. Do not lose it." Lunara stepped out of the Forgotten Moon Temple into a world gone gray. The feather in her hand pulled north like a compass needle on a string. She had a direction, a deadline, and a debt already paid. She lifted the silver root fragment to her lips and whispered the name of the oldest creature that had ever slept beneath the grove — the rose-winged drake her great-grandmother had fed by hand — and asked it to wake and guard what was left of the source until she came home with the rest. The fragment warmed once against her mouth, then cooled. Somewhere south, in a grove she could no longer picture in color, something old opened its eyes. She started walking north.

By the second morning north, Lunara's rations were half gone and the trail climbed into brush she did not know. The feather in her hand still pulled north, steady as a held breath. She had counted on foraging. She had not counted on the world going gray. The berries on the low canes could have been ripe or rotten or poison. She could not tell red from black anymore. She ate a dry crust and kept walking. By noon she was light-headed. She knelt by a cluster of bright fruit, held one to her nose, and could not decide. She thought of her sister's sash, which she could no longer picture. She thought of six days minus two. She put the berry down. A dog found her first. A stout thing, short-legged, broad-chested, with a wrinkled face and a bright bark. Behind the dog came an old man in a coat of dark feathers, leaning on a staff topped with a small animal skull. He looked at the berries by her knee. "Those will stop your heart by sundown," he said. "The ones two bushes over will feed you." "I can't see the difference," Lunara said. "I traded the color for a direction." The old man's mouth twitched. He introduced himself as Aldric Thornwood and did not ask what direction. He walked her along the slope and named things by shape and smell instead of shade. Round leaf, three points, milk in the stem — leave it. Long leaf, rough underside, sour smell — safe. The dog nosed each plant as he spoke, as if confirming. Lunara filled the front of her cloak with what he pointed to. He watched her hands shake and said nothing about it. At dusk he brought her to a shelter she had not seen from the trail: a dome of living willow, its branches bent and lashed into walls, the floor swept, a small fire pit dug at the center. "Ours," he said, and did not explain who ours was. Inside, he showed her a second cache — dried strips of root, hard cheese wrapped in cloth, a skin of water. He filled a pouch and pressed it into her hands. "Three days' worth. Eat the fresh first." When she tried to thank him, he shook his head. "Word came up from the grove. We know what's missing. Some of us gather now in a hall of ice further north. If your road fails, go there." She slept a few hours under the willow and left before dawn with the pouch heavy at her hip and the feather tugging her on. The hunger problem was solved. But Aldric had said we, and word came up, and a hall of ice — and she understood, walking, that the theft was larger than three people in a snow-buried cottage. Someone had wanted the wellspring badly enough that her people were already hiding.