Maerin Thornwick had missed the god twice this winter, and she could not afford a third. She knelt in the petrified woods at dawn, scraping gray lichen from a stone trunk into her satchel. The lichen would sell for two coppers in town, enough to keep her tincture stall open another week. But she had not come for lichen. She had come because three winters ago, in this same stand of trees, a god named the Last Keeper of Roots had waited for her and pressed a stone root into her palm. He had not spoken. He had only looked at her as if he already knew her name. She had returned eleven times since. She had seen him on four of those visits. The other seven, she had walked home with cold hands and the suspicion that he had stirred while she was selling salves to the miller's wife. The grove she used as her hiding place stood at the edge of the dead wood, six old oaks grown together over a low stone step. The oaks were still alive, which was why she trusted them. She had cleared the hollow between their trunks and stacked dry moss for a bed. She could sleep here a night, maybe two, before her absence drew questions in town. Today she meant to stay until she had an answer. She opened her grandmother's record book on her knee. Three pages of careful script on the Last Keeper of Roots, then nothing. Her grandmother had stopped writing mid-entry. Maerin did not know why. She only knew that the god was fading, that the land was dying with him, and that she had been chosen for something her grandmother had not finished. A small light moved in the brush. Then another. Six tiny winged figures drifted out from between the petrified trunks and circled her satchel, drawn to the lichen. Maerin held still. She had seen them once before, far off, never this close. One settled on the open page of the book and walked across her grandmother's writing. It tapped the paper twice with a bare foot, then lifted and flew three paces north before turning back to look at her. The others followed it. They hovered, waiting. Maerin understood then what her grandmother had been trying to record. The fairies came before he did. They had always come before he did. She closed the book, shouldered her satchel, and followed them deeper into the stone trees. For the first time in three winters, she knew she would not miss him.

Maerin followed the fairies until her lantern guttered. The oil had burned down faster than she planned, and the stone trees ahead drank what little flame she had left. She shook the lantern. A finger of oil sloshed at the bottom. The fairies kept moving, six small lights threading between the petrified trunks, and she could not lose them now. She pinched the wick lower and walked faster. The deep wood closed behind her. She counted her steps to keep panic out of her chest. Forty paces in, the fairies veered left around a fallen trunk and vanished. Maerin stopped. Her lantern showed only gray bark and her own breath. Then she saw the glow ahead, low to the ground, steady. She walked toward it. The fairies had settled on the rim of a round stone basin half-sunk in the forest floor. Water shimmered inside it, pale gold, lit from below. The six lights sat along the cracked edge and did not move. Maerin knelt. She blew out her lantern to save the last of the oil. The basin gave enough light to see her own hands. She waited. He came out of the trees the way he always did, without sound, as if the wood had agreed to part for him. The Last Keeper of Roots stood across the basin from her. His face was thinner than the last time. She could see the grain of stone under his skin. She fumbled in her satchel and brought out the sprig of sage she had carried for him since the new moon. She held it out across the water. He stepped forward and opened his hand. She laid the sage in his palm. He closed his fingers, then opened them. Three sprigs lay there now, then five, then a small green bundle that smelled sharp and alive in the cold air. He set the bundle back in her hand and folded her fingers around it. His touch was cool and dry. He bent and pressed his mouth to the back of her wrist. Then he stepped backward into the trees and was gone. The fairies lifted from the basin and followed him. Maerin sat in the dark with the sage warm against her palm. She had come for an answer and he had given her one she did not know how to read. He had fed her. He had marked her. He had left again. She would have to come back.