Mara Thistle had been open for wishes since Monday, and by Thursday her noticeboard still held only one pin and no paper. She stood in her doorway and counted the empty cork slots again. Twenty-four. She had promised herself she would fill every one before winter, each with a wish that came true for the villager who pinned it. That was the whole point of the cottage, the whole point of her staying in Brairwood at all. But the board hung on the side wall, behind the woodpile, where the path curved away from her door. Villagers passed the front gate and never turned the corner. She unhooked the board and carried it inside. The pine walls smelled of resin and yesterday's stew. She set the board on the bed, sat beside it, and tried to think like someone who did not already know her cottage existed. A stranger walking the lane would see her chimney, her flower beds, her blue-shuttered windows. They would not see a board tucked behind stacked logs. She had built the thing in the wrong place. That was the plain fact. A scuffle came from under the bed frame. Mara bent down. A round badger with a black mask across its eyes blinked back at her, a scrap of paper caught in its claws. It had been living under her floorboards since the first frost, and she had stopped trying to shoo it out. She took the scrap gently. Someone's handwriting, smudged: I wish my mother's cough would ease. The badger had found it near the gate, maybe, or dragged it from a pocket by the woodpile. A wish that had tried to reach her and failed. Mara stood up. She carried the board out the front door and drove the hook straight into the gatepost, at eye level, where anyone walking the lane would have to pass it. She pinned the smudged paper in the top left slot. Then she wrote in chalk across the top: PIN YOUR WISH. One down. Twenty-three to go. By the time she stepped back, a woman with a basket had already stopped on the lane and was reading.