Marcus Steve had been in Haremia for six days, and today he planned to ask a woman to court him without knowing a single rule for how it was done. He stood at the base of a wide stone staircase, gripping a bundle of pink flowers he'd bought from a street vendor. He was five-eleven, two hundred twenty-five pounds, and his long brown hair still smelled like the wrong soap. Back home he had no wife, no prospects, and a job that had ended the same week his lease did. Here, the guidebook at the port had promised, a man could build a household of many wives if he learned the customs. Marcus had read four pages before the boat docked. The temple rose above him, tiered roofs painted red, gold spires catching the sun. Women in pale robes climbed the steps in twos and threes. One glanced at his flowers and covered her mouth. Another laughed outright. A older man selling incense at the bottom step shook his head at Marcus. "Wrong color," the incense seller said. "Pink is for grief. You're proposing to a funeral." Marcus looked down at the bundle. "What color should it be?" "Depends on her house. Depends on her rank. Depends on the season." The man spat a seed onto the stone. "You don't know any of that. You'll be laughed off the steps before noon." Marcus's face went hot. He turned to leave and nearly walked into the low branch of a flowering tree at the temple wall. Something moved in the leaves. He froze. Three small figures hung in the branches, no taller than his hand, with wings like wet glass. They were watching him. One drifted down and landed on the flowers he still held. She sat cross-legged on a petal and looked up at him with the calm of someone who had seen this exact mistake before. "You bought these from Old Ren," she said. Her voice was small and clear. "He sells to tourists. He knows." "I didn't know anything," Marcus said. The fairy tilted her head. Her two sisters settled onto his shoulder and his wrist. "We know every house in the district. Every rank. Every season. We know which widow wants a second husband and which girl's father will break your jaw." "Why would you help me?" "Because you asked a question instead of climbing the steps." She pointed at the incense seller, who was already turning away, bored. "Most men don't." Marcus lowered the flowers slowly. "What do you want in return?" "A share of the household you build. A windowsill. A bowl of honey on feast days." She smiled. "Small things." He looked up at the temple steps, at the women still climbing, at the laughter he had almost walked into. Then he sat down on the bottom stair, the fairies still perched on him, and said, "Teach me."

Marcus sat on the bottom temple step with the three fairies still perched on him. The smallest one, the one who had done all the talking, crossed her arms and waited. He understood, after a moment, that she was waiting for something specific. "Before we teach you anything," she said, "we take the offering. That was the bargain." "Honey," Marcus said. "You said honey." "A jar. Sealed. Good honey, not the watered kind." The fairy on his wrist tapped his skin twice, impatient. "We don't teach on credit." Marcus opened his coat and checked his pockets. He had a few coins from the port exchange, a folded map, and the crumpled receipt for the wrong flowers. No honey. Nothing that could stand in for it. "I don't have any," he said. "I can get some. Where?" The lead fairy pointed down the road, past the incense seller. "The emporium. Two streets over. They carry everything. Go now. We'll wait in the tree." All three lifted off him at once and vanished into the flowering branches. Marcus dropped the pink flowers in a gutter and walked. The emporium stood at the corner with tall windows and a painted sign above the door. Inside, shelves ran floor to ceiling. Barrels of grain. Bolts of cloth. A wall of small satchels tied with twine, each labeled with a different seed. A woman behind the counter watched him without smiling. "Honey," Marcus said. "A jar. Good honey." She reached under the counter and set a clear jar on the wood. Amber inside, lid sealed tight, a paper label on the front. She named a price. Marcus counted his coins onto the counter. He was short. He counted again. Still short, by almost half. "That's what I have," he said. She slid the jar back toward her chest. "Then that's not enough." He looked at the seed satchels on the wall, at the cloth, at the barrels. He had nothing to trade. Then he remembered the folded map in his pocket, the port guidebook pages tucked inside it. Four pages, printed, in a language the locals read. Tourists paid for those at the dock. He pulled the pages out and laid them flat next to his coins. "These too. Port guide. New." The woman picked up the pages and read the top one. Her mouth moved. She set them down, took his coins, and pushed the jar across the counter. "Sold," she said. Marcus carried the jar back to the temple wall. The three fairies dropped out of the branches before he reached the tree. The lead fairy landed on the lid and pressed both hands against the glass. "Good," she said. "Sit down. First lesson." Marcus sat. He had paid. He had also just traded away the only pages he had ever read about this place, and now the fairies were the only guide he had left.

Marcus set the honey jar between his boots. The three fairies settled on the temple step in a row, wings folded. The lead fairy tapped the glass lid once, satisfied, then looked up at him. "First lesson," she said. "You want a household. That means women. More than one, if you can hold it together. Who have you seen since you got here?" Marcus thought. "The woman at the emporium. An incense seller down the road. A woman sweeping a porch two houses past the well." The fairy on the left, taller than the others, leaned forward. Her hair fell over one shoulder in a dark rope. "Pick one. We'll teach you how to approach her. But choose wrong and the lesson wastes. Each woman here wants a different opening." "What do you mean, wastes?" "We teach you the approach for the one you name," the lead fairy said. "Not all three. One woman, one lesson today. Choose badly and she turns you away, and you've spent the honey for nothing." Marcus rubbed his jaw. He knew almost nothing about any of them. The emporium woman had taken his coins and his pages without a smile. The incense seller had at least spoken to him, had corrected him about the pink flowers before he embarrassed himself further. The porch sweeper he had only glimpsed. "The incense seller," he said. "She already talked to me. She knows I'm new." The three fairies looked at each other. The smallest one's wings twitched. "Good pick," the lead fairy said. "She's a widow. That's why she sells incense. In Haremia a widow is approached with a small, useful gift, not flowers. Bring her salt or thread. Say your name and where you sleep. Nothing more the first time." "Where I sleep," Marcus repeated. "So she knows where to send word if she wants you back. You have a house?" "A rented one. Up the hill. Wooden porch, red chimney." "That'll do." The lead fairy stood on the jar lid. "Go. Salt from the emporium. Not thread — you'd pick the wrong color. Come back and tell us what she said." Marcus stood. The three fairies lifted with him and rode his shoulder down the road. He passed the well, the porch, the emporium door. He bought a paper twist of salt with the last of his coins and walked to the incense stall. The seller was there, folding cloth over her trays. She looked up when his shadow crossed her table. Marcus set the salt down between them. "Marcus Steve," he said. "I sleep in the house up the hill. Red chimney." She looked at the salt. She looked at him. Then she picked up the twist and slid it into her apron pocket. "Come back tomorrow," she said. Marcus walked away with empty hands and one woman waiting. The fairies on his shoulder were already whispering about the next.

Marcus climbed the hill to his rented house as the sun dropped. The porch boards creaked under his boots. The red chimney threw a long shadow across the yard. He sat on the top step and turned out his pockets. No coins. No salt. Nothing to bring the widow tomorrow. The fairies landed on the porch rail in a row. "You need a gift," the lead fairy said. "Empty hands tomorrow and she closes the door for good." "I spent the last coins on the salt," Marcus said. "I have no trade goods. I have the house and my boots." The smallest fairy's wings buzzed. "We can call someone. He owes us a favor." "Who?" "A friend," the lead fairy said. "He teaches this work. He owes us three lessons. We'll spend one on you." She cupped her hands and blew a thin whistle. Marcus waited. A few minutes later, boots came up the path. The man who stepped into the porch light was short and slim, with white hair pulled back and pointed ears. A gold heart hung at his throat. He wore a green coat with yellow stitching. He looked at Marcus the way a farrier looks at a horse's hoof. "This is the one?" he said. "Stand up. Turn around." Marcus stood. The elf walked a slow circle around him. "You're big," he said. "That's a start. You have a house. That's more than most. But you have nothing in your hands, and tomorrow you need something in your hands." He tapped his own chest. "I am Lysander Heartweave. The fairies called. I came. Show me the house." Marcus opened the door. Lysander walked through the front room, running a finger along the mantel. He stopped at a wooden box on the shelf. He lifted the lid. Inside sat a pair of gold rings. Marcus had not seen them before. The landlord's, maybe. Left behind. "These were here when you moved in?" Lysander asked. "Yes." "Then they are yours." Lysander closed the lid and handed him the box. "But do not give her both. Rings are too much for a second visit. She will think you are buying her." "Then what do I bring?" Lysander thought. He looked at the shelf, the hearth, the kitchen door. He walked to the woodpile by the stove and pulled a clean split of pine from the top. "Firewood," he said. "One good piece. A widow burns her own fuel. Bring her a stick of dry pine and say you cut it yourself. Useful. Humble. Correct." "I didn't cut it." "Then cut one tonight." He pressed the split into Marcus's chest. "Keep the rings hidden. You will need them later, for a different woman. Not this one. Not yet." Marcus took the wood. The fairies watched from the windowsill. He had his gift. He also had a second problem now: a pair of gold rings he had not earned, and a coach who already knew what he would do with them.

Lysander left with the fairies trailing behind him. Marcus stood on the porch with the split of pine in his hand. He looked at it. The piece was clean, dry, and useless as a lie. The widow would ask about the cut. He had never swung an axe at a standing tree in his life. He needed real firewood by morning, cut by his own hand, or the story would fall apart the moment she looked at his palms. He went around the back of the house. A rusted axe leaned against the woodshed. Behind the shed stood a dead tree, gray and split at the top. Marcus rolled up his sleeves and set his boots wide. The first swing bounced off the bark. The second bit and stuck. He worked it free and swung again. Sweat soaked his shirt. His shoulders burned. The tree groaned and leaned and finally cracked down into the grass. He cut it into rounds. He split the rounds with a wedge and the back of the axe. Bark tore his knuckles. Pine sap glued his fingers together. By the time the moon cleared the chimney, he had a small pile of split wood at his feet. Boots came up the path again. Lysander stepped into the yard, alone this time. He looked at the pile. He looked at Marcus's hands. "You listened," Lysander said. He sounded surprised. "I didn't want to lie to her." Lysander crouched by the pile and picked up a split. He turned it in the moonlight. He sniffed the cut end. "Green," he said. "You cut a dead tree, but the heart is still wet. This won't burn clean for a month." He set it down. "Bring her a piece from the porch stack. The dry one I gave you earlier. Say you cut it last season and cured it. That's closer to the truth she needs." Marcus wiped his hands on his shirt. "And this pile?" "Yours. You'll need it when winter comes." Lysander stood and brushed his knees. "You did the work. That matters more than you know. A woman can smell a soft man across a market." He walked to the porch and lifted the clean split from where Marcus had left it on the rail. He pressed it back into Marcus's hand. "Wrap it in cloth. Not paper. Cloth says you thought about it. Go at midday. Don't sit unless she offers. Don't mention the rings." "I wasn't going to." "Men say that. Then they mention the rings." Lysander looked past him toward the house. "Keep that box locked. There are three more women in this town worth the trouble, and one of them will earn what's inside. Not this widow." Marcus nodded. He had his gift. He had cut wood in his hands and a sore back to prove it. Tomorrow he could walk to the widow's door without shame.

Marcus woke before dawn with the split of pine on the table beside him. He rinsed his torn hands in the basin and looked at them. Raw palms. Sap under the nails. He had the gift. He had the story about cutting it last season. He did not have the words to hand it over. He tried a line aloud in the empty kitchen. It sounded like a man selling a horse. He tried another. Worse. He sat on the edge of the bed and understood he could ruin the whole thing at her door with one clumsy sentence. He walked out to the porch of his homestead and called for the fairies. No wings answered. Only wind in the dead tree behind the shed. He was about to try again when footsteps came up the path. An elf woman stopped at the bottom step. Silver hair to her waist. A pink blouse and a long lilac skirt. She carried no basket, no staff, nothing but her hands folded in front of her. She smiled like she already knew the trouble. "The sisters sent me," she said. "He handles the men who lie. I handle the men who freeze." Marcus felt his shoulders drop. "I don't know what to say to her." "Good. Men who know what to say say too much." Lunara Heartwhisper climbed the steps and took the split of pine off the rail. She weighed it in her palm. "Wrap it." He brought a square of clean cloth from inside. She folded it around the wood in three quick moves and tied it with the loose corner. "Now listen," she said. "You will not make a speech. You hand her the wood with both hands. You say, 'For your hearth.' Four words. Then you close your mouth and wait." "That's all?" "That's all. If she asks where it came from, you say last season's cut, cured on your porch. If she asks anything else, you answer short and true. Do not fill her silences. Widows use silence to measure a man." He repeated the line. For your hearth. She made him say it three times until it stopped sounding like a performance. "One more," she said. "When she takes it, step back. Do not lean in. Do not look at the door behind her. Look at her hands." "Her hands." "Her hands will tell you if she wants you to come again." Lunara stepped off the porch. "Midday. Go." At noon Marcus stood at the widow's door with the wrapped split in both hands. She opened it. He offered the bundle. "For your hearth." She took it. Her fingers closed around the cloth and stayed there. She did not step back. She looked at his raw palms, then at his face, and told him to come inside.

Inside the widow's house Marcus sat on a low stool while she set the wrapped pine on the mantel. She did not unwrap it. She poured him water and studied his hands again. "You cut this yourself," she said. Not a question. "Last season's," he said. "Cured on my porch." She nodded once. Then she said the thing he was not ready for. "I'll come tomorrow. With my chest and my chair." She looked around her own room like she was already done with it. "A widow doesn't wait long once she decides." Marcus set the cup down too hard. "To my house." "To your house." She sat across from him. Her hands opened on her knees, palms up. "I've been thinking since you gave me the salt. A man alone in that homestead needs more than one woman to run it. I know two others who would suit. A weaver at the low well. A girl who reads at the temple steps. I can speak to them for you." He stared. She had planned a household while he was still practicing four words on his porch. "You'd bring them." "I'd bring them. I'd sort them. I know how women live together and you don't." She leaned forward. "I want the north room for my loom. The kitchen runs under me. The others answer to me first, you second. Say yes now or say no now. I won't be a second wife to a woman you find later." His mind went to the locked box under his floor. The gold rings Lysander told him to keep hidden. For a future woman, not the widow. He kept his face still. "Yes," he said. "Good." She stood. "Go home. Clear the north room. Sweep the porch. I'll be there by the second bell." He walked back to his homestead with his hands shaking. The house looked different from the path. The dead tree behind the shed. The warped boards on the porch rail. The lamp by the door he had not lit in a week. He climbed the steps and stood in his own front room and tried to see it the way she would see it tomorrow. The north room held a broken chair and three sacks of feed. He carried them out. He swept. He wiped the window. He stopped at the floorboard over the box and pressed his palm flat on it. He had said yes to a woman who would run his household and pick the next two. He had also said yes to hiding rings from her on her first day. The fairies had promised him a harem. The widow was going to build one and stand at the top of it. He closed the north room door and went to find the fairies before the second bell.

Marcus found the fairies in the rafters of his porch, small and bright as struck matches. He told them the widow was coming with her chest and chair before the second bell. He told them she meant to bring a weaver and a temple reader. He did not tell them about the rings under the floor. "She moves fast," said the smallest fairy. "Good. Sweep the porch again. Light the lamp by the door. A woman judges a house before she judges the man in it." He swept. He lit the lamp. He carried the broken chair out to the dead tree behind the shed and left it there. The homestead looked at him with its two upstairs windows like eyes. The warped rail on the porch shamed him. He nailed it flat and split his thumb doing it. The second bell rang across the valley. She came up the path with a boy pulling a cart. On the cart sat a chest, a chair, a loom in pieces, and a covered basket. She did not knock. She walked onto his porch, looked at the fresh nail in the rail, and nodded once. "North room?" she said. "Cleared." She paid the boy and sent him off. Then she carried the basket inside, set it on his table, and opened it. Bread. Salt. A small pot of lard. She put them on his shelf like she had lived there a year. "Sit," she said. He sat. She sat across from him and laid both hands flat on the table between them. "The weaver first," she said. "She's at the low well most mornings. Her husband drowned two winters back and her brother's wife has grown tired of feeding her. She'll come if she's asked right." "Asked how?" "Salt again. And a spool of undyed thread from the emporium. You give the salt. I give the thread. She'll understand what that means." "And I say what." "Your name. Your location. That a household is forming and there is a loom waiting." She tapped the table once. "Not more. Widows and near-widows don't want speeches." He watched her hands. They were steady. She had done this kind of planning before, for other people, in other kitchens. "Tomorrow," she said. "Morning bell. I'll walk you to the well and stand back. You do the giving. I do the reading after." "Reading?" "Her hands. Same as I did yours." She almost smiled. "You learn fast for a foreign man. Go to the emporium before dark. Buy the thread. Buy salt in a paper twist, not a jar. Jars are for widows already settled." He stood. She was already looking at his kitchen shelves, sorting them in her head. He walked out with a name he did not yet know and a plan he had not written. The household had begun without him and around him. Tomorrow he would meet the second woman.