The first blight-wind came at dawn, and Lysander Brightwind knew he had six weeks to spin a cocoon big enough to hide every fairy in the grove. He stood on a low branch and pulled a thread from his fingertips. The wind snapped it before it reached the leaf below. He tried again, thicker this time. The thread tore, drifted, and vanished over the ferns. Lysander was strong for a fairy, broad-shouldered, blue-eyed, with hair the color of pollen. Strength did not help him here. Silk needed walls. Silk needed a roof. The open grove offered neither, and the blight-wind would only grow meaner as the weeks passed. Without a sheltered anchor, every strand he spun would rip loose and waste itself on the sky. He flew low along the moss paths, searching. Hollow logs were too small. The old stump was cracked through. He landed at last outside a compact green shed tucked between two roots. Hooks lined the ceiling in tidy rows. The interior was gray, dry, and still. Wind pressed the walls but did not enter. He measured the space with his wingspan. Wide enough for an anchor line. Tall enough to hang a first bloom of silk. But not nearly large enough to shelter a grove of fairies. A seed, then. Not the cocoon itself. A place to start one that could grow outward. "You're standing in my workshop." Celestia Threadwhisper stood in the doorway with a spool under one arm and a half-finished net looped around her wrist. Blue hair, green eyes, a skirt stitched from petal scraps. She was the grove's best weaver, and she had been avoiding him since the council named him cocoon-keeper over her. Lysander felt the old sting and set it aside. "I need the shed," he said. "For an anchor. The wind is tearing my silk." She looked past him at the sky. Her mouth tightened. She had felt the blight-wind too. "An anchor won't hold a grove-wide cocoon on its own," she said. "You'd need something heavy at the center. A living weight." "Do you have one?" She stepped inside and hung her spool on a hook. "I have an idea. But I want the shed shared, not taken." "Shared," he said. She whistled once, high and clean. Something stirred above the shed roof. A giant silk moth drifted down through the doorway, wings pale as milk, antennae feathered like ferns. It settled on the center hook and folded its wings. The hook bent, then held. Lysander drew a thread from his fingers and pressed it to the moth's shoulder. The silk caught. He tugged. It did not tear. "That will hold a start," Celestia said. "Not the whole grove." "Then we build outward from here," he said. Outside, the second blight-wind was already rising, and it smelled of rot.

By midday the second blight-wind pressed hard against the shed walls. Lysander Brightwind fed a fresh thread from his fingers to the moth's shoulder and watched the first bloom of silk spread across the hooks. It held. Then a thin gray seep came through the seam under the door, low and slow, like smoke that had forgotten how to rise. He smelled rot again. The blight itself was inside. Celestia Threadwhisper crouched by the seam and pulled back her hand fast. "It burns cold," she said. "Any fairy who breathes that inside the cocoon will sicken. We can't seal a shelter around poison." Lysander pressed a strip of silk to the gap. The silk yellowed and curled. He tried a second layer. The seep pushed through. Silk alone would not hold it out. He thought of the cliffside grotto where he slept. Pale stone. Cold air that never smelled of rot. The wind broke on the rocks above his door and slid past clean. Something in that stone turned the blight aside. He did not know what. He knew only that his own bed had never sickened him. "There are daisies growing at the mouth of my grotto," he said. "Pink and purple. They keep their color even in the wind off the cliff." Celestia looked up. "Living stems?" "Living. The wind there is clean." He flew out through the crack above the door and came back within the hour with a bundle of daisies pressed to his chest, roots and all, stems still wet. Celestia was already at her spindle. She took a stem, split it with her thumbnail, and drew out a green fiber thin as hair. "Feed it to me with the moth-silk," she said. He held the daisy fiber against the silk as she spun. The two threads twisted into one. She wound a short length off the spindle and pressed it to the seam under the door. The seep hit the composite thread and stopped. The thread did not yellow. It did not curl. Lysander breathed out. "It holds." "For a hand's width," Celestia said. She lifted the spindle. "We need enough to line every seam of a grove-wide cocoon. One spindle. Two weavers." He measured the shed with his eyes. Four seams at the door. Ten more at the roof. Beyond that, the whole outer wall of the cocoon they had not yet spun. "How long for one span?" he asked. "A month. If we don't sleep." The blight-wind had given him six weeks. He had spent one already. He knelt beside her at the spindle and took up a fresh stem. His mother's hands had been steadier. His would have to be enough. Outside, the seep kept coming. Inside, the first inch of clean seam held.

By dusk Lysander Brightwind had emptied the last bundle of daisies onto Celestia Threadwhisper's worktable. He counted the stems twice. Forty-two. Enough for six days of spinning. Not thirty. He set his palm flat on the pile and felt how thin it was. Celestia looked up from the spindle. Her hands were red at the knuckles. "How short?" "Three weeks short." "Then the seams open again in six days." She said it plain, the way she said everything. Then she added, "I can spin faster. It won't matter." He knew the grotto. He had picked it clean that morning. The daisies grew only along the cliff mouth, where the wind broke on stone. He had pulled every stem that would come free without killing the root. "I need someone who knows why they grow there," he said. "And nowhere else." Celestia set the spindle down. "The old scholar. In the robe of gossamer and silver. He owes the grove an answer for something. He might give you this one." Lysander flew to the edge of the grove before full dark. He found the scholar seated on a flat stone outside a lean-to, sorting pressed leaves into two piles. Grey hair. Brown eyes that did not lift when Lysander landed. The robe was the one Celestia had described, hem grey with road dust. This was the man fairies spoke of when they wanted knowledge and did not want to say why they needed it. "Aldric Silverweave," Lysander said. "I have daisies that resist the blight. I need more of them. My grotto holds only six days' worth." Aldric kept sorting. "Show me a stem." Lysander handed one over. Aldric held it near his eye, then bit the root and spat. "Cliff daisies. They drink from a seam of clean water under the stone. The seam runs east under the chasm." "There are more, then. On the far side." "On the far cliff. Above where the clans stopped speaking." Aldric set the stem down. "I won't cross for you. That is my limit. Ask it plain and I'll answer it plain, but I won't cross." "I'm not asking you to cross. I'm asking where they grow." "Then you have your answer." Aldric returned to his leaves. "A child waits on that cliff. She has been waiting since the chasm opened. Bring her back with the daisies or don't come back at all." Lysander flew home through the dark with the one stem in his fist. Celestia was still at the spindle when he pushed through the door. "There are more," he said. "Across the chasm." She did not stop spinning. "Then we need a bridge before we need thread." He sat down beside her. Six days of daisies lay between them. On the far side of the grove, a gap he could not fly waited with a child on its lip and a field of flowers behind her.

By first light Lysander stood at the near cliff with a coil of rope over his shoulder and a spool of moth-silk at his belt. The chasm cut the grove in a long ragged line. Across the gap, a small figure sat with her knees drawn up. Behind her, a whole field of pale daisies bent in a low steady wind. He had come to string a line and cross. He had come to bring the child back with her arms full of stems. The wind changed while he uncoiled the rope. It came down the near cliff in a dry rasp, and the leaves at his feet curled black and lifted off the stone. Blight-wind. He knew the sound. He had heard it seep through Celestia Threadwhisper's seams six days ago. Now it moved along the cliff toward the far side in a slow gust, and it was stripping every green thing as it went. He looked across. The daisies still stood. If the gust reached them first, the roots would go before he ever touched a stem. Celestia landed beside him with her spindle strapped to her back. Her hair was tied off her face. Her hands were bandaged at the knuckles. "You're not fast enough alone." "I know." "Then let me spin a shield across the gust line. Short throw. It might hold long enough for you to cross." "Your thread snaps." "Not every time." She was already unwinding. "Go when I say." She braced her feet at the edge and threw a line of silk sideways along the cliff, spinning it thick and low against the stone. The thread caught on a root knot and held. The blight-wind pressed against it and slowed. Not stopped. Slowed. The leaves past her thread still curled, but the gust bent upward and thinned as it climbed over. "Now," she said through her teeth. Lysander shot a weighted line across the chasm. It bit into the far rock. He hooked in and went hand over hand above the drop. Halfway across, the wind clawed at his back. He heard Celestia's thread snap behind him with a sound like a wet cord breaking. He did not look. He kept moving. He landed on the far cliff and ran. The child stood up. Her face was streaked with dust. He did not stop to speak. He pulled daisies by the fistful, roots and all, and stuffed them into the sling at his hip until it bulged. The wind was climbing the far cliff now. Leaves at the field's edge blackened. He caught the child under the arms. "Hold my neck." She did. He hooked the line and swung them both back over the gap while the field behind her went dark. On the near side, Celestia was on her knees, hands bleeding through the wrap. She looked at the sling, then at the child, and said, "Thirty days of thread."

By midday Celestia sat on the floor of her shed with her back against the wall. Her hands were wrapped again, and the wraps were already spotted through. The spindle lay in her lap. She had tried to spin twice since dawn. Both times the thread had come off knotted and thin. Lysander watched her from the doorway with the sling of daisies still on his hip. "I can't work the wheel," Celestia said. "Not for thirty days. Maybe not for ten." "The seams open in six." "I know." The daisies in the sling were pink and purple, roots trailing dirt onto the plank floor. He had risked her hands for them. Now they would rot before anyone could spin them into thread. He set the sling on a hook and looked at the empty wheel. "I'll spin," he said. "You don't spin composite. You weave." "Then teach me." "In six days." She almost smiled. "You'd tear your fingers to the bone and still be short." A small knock came at the shed door. A green-haired fairy stood outside in a robe she had clearly made herself. The hem was uneven. One sleeve was longer than the other. She held her own spindle against her chest like a shield. "I heard from the elders," she said. "That you needed hands." Lysander did not know her. Celestia lifted her head. "Lyra. The apprentice." "I'm not a master," Lyra said. "My weavings fall apart before the magic sets. Mostly." She looked at the floor. "Once I held warmth in a bench for three days. I want to know if that was luck." Celestia watched her a long moment. "Composite thread. Daisy fiber and moth-silk. The ratio has to be exact or it snaps at the loom." "Tell me the ratio." "Three of silk to one of fiber. Twist tight. Feed slow." Lyra set her spindle down and picked up Celestia's. She sat at the wheel. Her first pull came off lumpy and broke. Her second held. Her third ran clean for the length of a forearm before it thinned. She stopped and looked at Celestia. "Slower feed," Celestia said. "And don't watch the thread. Watch your thumb." Lyra tried again. The thread ran even. Lysander sat down beside Celestia and unwrapped the sling. He began stripping stems for the wheel. By dusk they had a full spool. Not thirty days' worth. Not yet. But the spool was real, and the wheel was turning, and the hands at the wheel were not his. "She's slow," Celestia said quietly. "She's spinning." "She'll need to be faster." "Tomorrow." Celestia closed her eyes. Outside, the blight-wind pressed at the shed walls and did not find a seam.

By morning Lyra was at the wheel again. The spool from yesterday sat on the shelf. A second was starting to fill. Celestia sat where Lysander had left her, her wrapped hands folded in her lap. Lysander stripped stems at the bench. The shed was small and the work took every inch of it. Thistle sat on the floor by the door. Lysander had brought him along at dawn because the boy would not stay behind. The child rescued from the far cliff still watched Lysander as if he might vanish. Silver shirt. Silver breeches. Purple hair he could not read the meaning of. He held his knees and said nothing for an hour. Then he stood up. He wandered to the wheel. He crouched by Lyra's foot to watch the treadle. Lyra's thread thinned, caught, and snapped. "Move back," Lyra said, not unkindly. Thistle moved back one step. He crouched again. He reached out and touched a loose daisy stem on the floor. The stem rolled. It rolled under the wheel and jammed the treadle. Lyra pulled her foot up. The spindle jerked. Half a forearm of composite thread came off the bobbin in a knot and tore. "Out," Celestia said. Short. Flat. "He has to go out." Lysander set down his knife. Thistle's black eyes were already wet. The boy had done nothing on purpose and knew he had done something anyway. "I can't watch him and strip stems," Lysander said. "Then stop stripping stems." "We need the stems." "We need the thread more. One broken spool is a day. We don't have a day." Lysander knelt in front of Thistle. The boy would not look up. "I wanted to help," Thistle said. "I know." "I don't know how." Lysander thought of the moth on the roof beam, holding the anchor line steady with its weight. He thought of Celestia's hands. He thought of six days. He picked up a clean daisy stem and put it in Thistle's palm. "Sort them," Lysander said. "Pink in one pile. Purple in the other. On the step outside. Not in here." Thistle closed his hand around the stem. "Outside." "Where I can see you through the door. Don't come past the frame." Thistle carried the sling out to the step. He sat with his back to the green wall and began to sort. Pink. Purple. Pink again. His small hands were steady in a way Lysander's had never been. Inside, Lyra's wheel found its rhythm. The second spool filled by noon. Celestia watched the boy through the open door and did not speak for a long time. "He can't stay with you," she said finally. "He has nowhere else." "Then find him somewhere. Before the seams open." She looked at her wrapped hands. "He needs a place of his own. So do you." Lysander watched Thistle sort the stems and knew she was right.

By afternoon the wheel had filled a third spool. Thistle sorted stems on the step. Lysander stripped a fresh bundle at the bench. Then he heard it. A thin whistle above the rafters. Not wind through the door. Higher. Sharper. He looked up. A gap had opened where the roof plank met the crossbeam. The seal there was old moth-silk, no daisy in it. Blight-wind slid through in a pale thread of vapor. It curled down toward the shelf where the fresh spools sat. "Celestia," Lysander said. She looked up. She saw it too. "The thread will spoil before dusk." Lyra's foot stopped on the treadle. "I can't spin faster." "Keep spinning," Celestia said. "Lysander. Seal it." He climbed the bench. He could reach the gap with one hand. He had no composite thread to close it. The spools on the shelf were promised to the seams of the great cocoon. Take one and the shelter opened somewhere else. "I need thread that isn't ours," he said. Celestia's wrapped hands tightened in her lap. "Aria." "She turned down bigger work than this." "Ask anyway." Lysander dropped from the bench. He told Thistle to stay on the step and not move. He ran. He found the master spinner at her own wheel under a low awning. Rainbow hair. Yellow eyes that did not lift when he came near. Her thread ran off the bobbin in a line so fine he almost couldn't see it. "A gap in the shed roof," Lysander said. "Blight-wind. The fresh spools spoil by dusk." "Composite?" "I have no daisy left. Only moth-silk scraps." "Moth-silk won't hold blight." "I know." She stopped the wheel. She looked at him for the first time. "My thread holds what it's tied to. It won't block seep. It will hold a patch in place while you make a real one." "That buys hours." "That's what I have." She cut a length off her bobbin and coiled it in his palm. "Go." He turned and almost ran into Aldric Silverweave. The old scholar stood in the path with his gossamer robe pulled close. He had a scrap of daisy pulp in one hand, dry and grey. Not enough to spin. Enough to smear. "Chew it," Aldric said. "Press it in the gap. Then tie it with her line. It will hold six hours. No more." "Where did you get that?" "From what Lyra didn't use." Aldric closed Lysander's fingers around the pulp. "Six hours. Find another way by dark." Lysander ran back. He climbed the bench. He chewed the pulp until it was soft, pressed it into the gap, and lashed Aria's thread across it in a tight cross. The whistle stopped. The vapor thinned and died. The spools were safe. The shelf was quiet. Celestia looked at the patch. "Six hours." "Six hours," Lysander said. Outside, Thistle had stopped sorting. He was watching the sky.

The patch held. The whistle stayed gone. Lysander stood on the bench and stared at the grey smear he had chewed into the gap. Six hours. Aria's thread crossed it in a tight X. By dusk the pulp would dry and crack, and the blight-wind would slide back in over the fresh spools. He needed something that would not rot, would not pull loose, would not care about wind. He climbed down. Celestia watched him from her stool, her wrapped hands folded. Lyra kept the treadle moving. "Stone," Lysander said. Celestia's brow lifted. "You can't stitch stone." "I don't need to stitch it. I need to set it. A plug the shape of the gap, cut to fit, wedged from above." "Who cuts stone that small and that clean?" "The troll at the quarry road." Celestia's mouth tightened. "He charges." "I know." He found Aldric on the path outside. The old scholar had not gone far. His gossamer robe was pulled close against the wind. He was chewing the inside of his cheek, which he did when he had already thought a thing through and was deciding whether to say it. "Grendok," Aldric said, before Lysander spoke. "Yes. Take him a stem of Aria's thread as proof of the size. He'll want a measure, not a story." "He hates fairies." "He tolerates work. Offer him something he wants." "I have nothing." Aldric looked at him a long moment. "You have the moth-silk scraps. He builds. Scraps bind mortar. Not much. Enough to interest him." Lysander ran. The troll worked under an open shed at the edge of the grove, sleeves rolled, hammer set aside. He was short and thick through the chest, black hair falling over dark eyes. He was running a thumb along the grain of a grey block, reading it. He did not look up. "Roof gap," Lysander said. "Shed. This wide, this deep." He held up Aria's thread bent to the measure. Grendok took the thread. Held it against his thumb. "Granite plug. Tapered. One hour to cut." "I have moth-silk scraps for your mortar. Nothing else." "Two sacks?" "Two sacks." "Done." Grendok picked up a chisel. "Bring them at dusk. I'll set it myself. Fairy hands won't seat it right." Lysander opened his mouth to argue and closed it. At dusk Grendok came to the shed. He climbed the bench without asking. He knocked out the daisy pulp with the butt of his chisel. Lysander flinched. For a breath the gap was open and the vapor curled through. Then Grendok drove the plug up into the hole with two flat strikes and packed the seam with grey paste from a tin. The whistle did not come back. Grendok climbed down, took his two sacks of scraps, and left without a word. Celestia looked at the roof. "That will hold past the blight." "Yes," Lysander said. Then, quieter: "We spent the last of the moth-silk."

The plug held through the night. In the morning Lysander stood outside the shed with a list in his head and no time to write it down. Celestia had set the deadline plain: Thistle needed a permanent home before the flying rite, or the boy would be cast out of the clans entirely. Lysander had asked every elder he could name. Every elder had said no. He walked the grove path with Thistle beside him. The boy in his silver shirt kept pace without speaking. Lysander tried the weaver elder at the west shed first. She looked at Thistle's hair, then at his shirt, and shook her head before Lysander finished the question. The spinner elder at the pond said the same. The third elder did not even open her door. "They won't say why," Thistle said. His voice was flat. "Just no." "I know." "It's the silver." "I know." Lyra found them on the path back. She was carrying a bundle of stems for Celestia. Her robe still had the crooked seam at the hem. "Aldric is at the old oak," she said. "With a human. And another child. I thought you should know." Lysander went. The old oak stood at the edge of the grove where the path forked. Aldric sat on a root. Beside him, a woman in round glasses and a flowered jacket sat cross-legged in the dirt, staring at her own hands as if she had misplaced them. A small brown-haired boy in rags pressed one palm flat against the oak's bark and did not move. "Pip," Aldric said, without turning. "Fernwhisper. Found him at the root last night. He is trying to get home." "And her?" "Whitmore. She came through a door she should not have opened." Aldric's mouth tightened. "The stitching is loose. More will come." Dr. Whitmore looked up. "I know how a liminal shift works. I just can't walk it back. Sorry. That's not useful to you." Lysander crouched by Pip. The boy did not flinch, but he did not turn either. His palm stayed on the bark. "His mother is at the oak," Aldric said. "Not this one. Another. He touches every oak on the way." Lysander looked back at Thistle, standing apart on the path in his silver shirt. Then at Aldric. "No elder will take him," Lysander said. "I've asked them all." Aldric was quiet a long moment. Then he said, "Then he stays with you. Past the deadline. Past the rite. The clans will call it wrong. It will cost you standing you have not spent yet." "He stays," Lysander said. Thistle heard it. He did not smile. He walked over and sat down beside Pip at the oak, and put his own hand on the bark next to the smaller one. He did not say anything. He did not need to.

By midmorning Lysander stood at the shed door with the last spool in his hand. Thistle sat on the step behind him, feet crossed. The cocoon's south seam still gaped. Celestia was inside, hands wrapped, unable to spin. Lyra could work one wheel. One wheel was not enough. He needed two more spinners by dusk or the seam would open on the grove. "I'll go again," Lysander said. "They said no yesterday," Thistle said. "They'll say no today." "I'll ask anyway." He walked the path to the north spinner's shed. The elder there met him at the door. She looked past his shoulder at Thistle in his silver shirt and shook her head. "Not while the boy is with you." "The seam will fail." "Then set the boy down somewhere." He went to the next shed and the next. Two spinners refused before he finished speaking. One shut her door. A fourth said she would come if he sent Thistle to sleep at another oak by night. Lysander said no and walked on. By afternoon he was back at Celestia's shed with nothing. Lyra was at the wheel, her crooked-hem robe dusty at the knees. Celestia sat with her wrapped hands in her lap. "None," Lysander said. "I heard," Celestia said. "Word moves faster than you do." Lyra looked up. "Aria hasn't answered you?" "Aria said no last week. Same reason." Thistle stood in the doorway. "Then I go." "You stay," Lysander said. "The seam fails, the grove dies. I'll sit at the far oak till it's done." "No." Celestia lifted her head. "He's not wrong about the math." "He's eight." "He's the reason they won't come." Lysander set the spool down. "Then they don't come. I made the choice at the oak. I'm not unmaking it." A shadow crossed the doorway. Aria stood there in her silk tunic, curls loose, a wheel strapped to her back. Behind her was Dr. Whitmore, sleeves rolled, hair pulled tight. "Aldric told me you'd choose the boy," Aria said. "I wanted to see it." She swung the wheel down. "I'll spin. One night. Then I'm done." "Why now?" Lysander asked. "You didn't trade him for the seam. That's the whole answer." Dr. Whitmore held up her hands. "I can't spin. I can feed a wheel and I can sort stems. Put me somewhere useful before I lose my nerve." Lyra was already clearing the second bench. Aria sat, threaded her wheel, and began. The thread came out even on the first pull. By dusk the south seam closed. Aria stood, stretched, and shouldered her wheel. "Done," she said, and walked out without looking back. Celestia examined the closed seam with her wrapped hand. "South holds," she said. "But I checked the east wall while you were gone. A silkworm found a crack in the anchor plug. It's chewing."

Celestia led Lysander to the east wall at dusk. The silkworm had chewed a hole the width of a thumb through the anchor plug's crack. Fresh thread hung around it in loose curls. The worm had pulled a strand loose from the seam and was working it into its own gut. Lysander watched a second strand slip. "It likes the new thread best," Celestia said. "If it burrows in, the east wall unravels. We lose the seam by morning." "Pull it out." "It's wedged. Pry it and the plug cracks worse." Lysander crouched. He had nothing to bait it with. The grotto daisies were gone. The moth-silk scraps were gone. He could not offer it food it wanted more than what it was already eating. Aldric came up the path with Dr. Whitmore beside him. The old scholar looked at the hole and did not speak for a long moment. "Silkworms follow scent," Aldric said. "Fresh silk over old. Living silk over spun." "There's no living silk left," Lysander said. "Celestia's hands are wrapped." "A moth still spins at the end," Aldric said. "Before it lays." Dr. Whitmore folded her arms. "You want to bait a worm with a moth. That's the plan." "A silver moth," Aldric said. "One came to my window last night. It's carrying eggs. Its thread will pull the worm off yours." "And after?" Lysander asked. "After, the worm follows the moth wherever the moth goes." Lysander understood. He looked at Celestia. She nodded once. Aldric produced the moth from a fold of his robe. It sat on his palm, pale and small, wings folded. It began to spin a short thread down from his thumb, thin as breath. "Set it on the plug," Aldric said. "Then carry it out past the chasm before the worm finishes." Lysander took the moth. It weighed almost nothing. He placed it beside the hole. The moth spun. The worm's head lifted. It let the chewed strand fall from its mouth and turned toward the new thread. Dr. Whitmore exhaled. "It's working." The worm crawled from the plug and fastened onto the moth's fresh line. Lysander lifted the moth by its wings, worm trailing. He carried both down the path at a walk, slow enough to keep the thread unbroken. Celestia stayed at the wall to patch the hole with what was left of Lyra's spool. At the chasm edge Lysander set the moth down on a stone. It kept spinning. The worm kept feeding. He backed away. He returned at full dark. Celestia met him at the shed. "East holds," she said. "But the moth was carrying eggs. Aldric didn't say how many. By dawn there'll be more worms than we can carry."