Matilda had wanted control over the summer thermometer since she was a girl, and tonight she meant to start her journey to take it. She spread a blank sheet of parchment paper on the kitchen table of her bramble-wrapped cottage and set her cracked raven feather beside it. The potion she wanted would cause the thermometer to plummet into the hottest temperatures anyone had ever experienced. It would affect every living thing in the woods. Deer, wolves, the raven that had slipped her snares for three months, even Summer Sun, the one who controls the thermometer now. She had told herself the recipe for years like a prayer. Tonight she would write it down and begin. She closed her eyes and reached for the first line. Nothing came. She reached for the second. Nothing came there either. She had heard the potion named in her grandmother's kitchen, in a traveling peddler's song, in the margin of a burned book. She had never seen it whole. She opened the cupboard where she kept her mother's notes and turned every page. Herbs. Curses. A recipe for boiled turnips. No potion. She checked the shelf behind the salt. She checked the loose brick under the hearth. She found a dead moth and three copper coins. A knock came at the door. Matilda shoved the parchment under a dish and opened it a crack. Summer Sun stood on the step in her striped dress, holding a teacake wrapped in cloth. "Brought you something." She held it out. "You look tired." Matilda took the cake without answering. Summer Sun glanced past her at the empty parchment, at the open cupboard, at the mess. "Looking for something?" Matilda said she was not. Summer Sun nodded once. "Granny Weatherby keeps old recipes. All of them. She showed me a book once. Big one. Locked." She said it flat, the way she said everything, and did not press. Then she turned and walked back down the path. Matilda shut the door and leaned against it. She had spent years pretending she remembered the recipe. She did not. Not a single line. The truth sat in her chest like a swallowed stone. Somewhere in the barn where Granny Weatherby kept her things, there was a book that might hold what Matilda needed. Granny Weatherby had chased Matilda out of that barn once already. She would not be welcome twice. Matilda picked up the teacake, set it on the table beside the empty parchment, and looked at the dark window. The brewing could not begin without the recipe. The recipe was not hers. She would have to go and take it, and she would have to do it without Summer Sun learning why she had asked.

The teacake sat untouched on the table for two days. Matilda circled it while she planned. She needed the locked book from the old witch's barn, and she needed to fetch it before Summer Sun came calling again. Summer Sun had said she would drop in soon. Soon in that flat voice could mean tomorrow. Matilda could not be halfway out the door with a crowbar when the sunflower-headed girl knocked. She laid out her tools on the kitchen table of her bramble-wrapped cottage. A short iron bar. A knife for the lock. A sack lined with wool to muffle the book's weight. She pulled her cloak from the hook and checked the sky through the crooked window. Late afternoon. The old witch tended her hives at dusk, at the far end of her land. That was the window. Matilda would go tonight. She was tying the sack shut when the knock came. Three soft taps. Matilda froze. She shoved the iron bar under a dishcloth and the sack behind the woodbin. She smoothed her hair. She opened the door. Summer Sun stood on the step in her striped dress, holding a jar of honey. "Brought you this. Weatherby sent it." She held out the jar. Matilda took it. The label was written in a careful old hand. "Thought I'd sit a while," Summer Sun said. "If that's alright." Matilda's throat closed. Behind her, the corner of the wool sack showed past the woodbin. She stepped sideways to block the view and said, "Come in." They sat. Matilda poured tea with steady hands and a loud pulse. Summer Sun talked about the meadow, about a bee that had followed her home, about nothing that mattered. She did not look at the woodbin. She did not look at the dishcloth. She sipped her tea and let the quiet sit between them like a third chair. Matilda answered when answered was needed. She laughed once, thin, at a story about the bee. The window darkened. The dusk window closed. The old witch would be back inside her house by now, book locked away, barn shut. Matilda watched the light leave the glass and felt the plan die in her chest. When Summer Sun finally stood to go, she paused at the door. "You look tired again," she said. "Rest." Then she was down the path. Matilda shut the door and leaned against it. The honey jar sat on the table beside the cold tea. She had chosen the visit over the barn. She had chosen it without deciding to. Tomorrow the old witch would be watchful, the book harder to reach, and Matilda would have to find another way in. She pulled the sack from behind the woodbin and set it by the hearth. The tools inside clinked once and were still.

Matilda woke before dawn with the tools still stacked by the hearth. The plan had not changed. She needed the book. What had changed was the old witch. After the honey jar and the visit, the old witch would be listening for footsteps on her land. Matilda could not walk blind to the barn a second time. She needed to know when the old witch left and when she came back. She needed eyes on the barn without setting a boot near it. She climbed to the loft and pulled the cloth off the looking glass. The frame was cold. She had not used it in a year. She set it on the kitchen table and cut her thumb over the base. A drop of blood ran down the silver leg. She spoke the sighting words her mother had taught her and named the place she wanted to see. The glass clouded, then cleared. The barn appeared in the surface, small and sharp, sunlit boards and the double doors shut tight. She watched all morning. The old witch came out at nine with a basket and went to the hives. She was back by ten. She went in the house. At noon she carried a pail to the barn, stayed twenty minutes, and came out again. At three she walked the fence line. At dusk she shut the chickens in and locked the barn door with a key she wore on a cord. Matilda wrote every time on a scrap of paper. By nightfall she had a schedule. One gap kept opening. Every second afternoon the old witch left with a covered basket and walked toward the village road. She was gone almost two hours. On those days the barn stood quiet. Matilda checked the glass twice more to be sure. The pattern held. She would still need a place to wait close by, somewhere she could step from cover to door in under a minute. She thought of the sagging shed at the edge of the old witch's field. No one had used it in years. From its broken window she could see the barn doors. From its back wall she could reach the barn in thirty strides. Matilda wrapped the glass in cloth and set it on the shelf. She marked the next basket day on her calendar. Two mornings from now. She had a window, and she had a hiding place. The blind guessing was done. She banked the fire and finally slept, and for the first night in a week she did not dream of the barn door swinging open on the old witch's face.

Matilda woke on basket day with the schedule folded in her pocket. She had a window and a hiding place. What she did not have was cover. The shed at the edge of the field sagged on three sides, and its front wall faced the lane the old witch walked twice a day. Two hours was a long time to crouch behind broken boards. If a neighbor cut across the field, or a boy chased a dog through the grass, they would see her through the gaps. One pair of eyes would end the plan. She walked out at first light to fix it. She carried a bundle of cut brambles, a spool of dark thread, and a pot of soot mixed with lard. The shed leaned into the weeds like a tired animal. Moss climbed the boards. The door hung on one hinge. Matilda worked the door shut and wedged it with a stone. Inside, dust hung in the light. She rubbed soot into the pale wood around the broken window so her face would not shine through. She wove brambles across the front gaps from the inside, thick enough to block a look, loose enough to see out. She swept the floor clear of anything that might crack under her boot. She marked the spot where she would kneel and the spot where she would stand. She was tying the last bramble when she heard footsteps in the grass. Matilda froze with the thread in her teeth. Through the window she saw the old witch pass along the lane with a covered basket on her arm, humming, not ten paces from the shed wall. The old witch did not turn her head. She walked on toward the village road. Matilda counted to a hundred after the humming faded. Then she counted to a hundred again. The barn stood quiet across the field, its wooden siding warm in the sun, the double doors shut. Her window had opened. Matilda did not move to the barn. Not yet. She stayed inside the shed and watched the lane for the full two hours, testing the hide. A farmhand crossed the far corner of the field and never looked her way. A crow landed on the roof and left. When the old witch came back up the lane with an empty basket, Matilda was pressed to the inside wall, breath slow, and the old witch passed without a glance. Matilda waited until the cottage door shut in the distance. Then she slipped out the back, keeping the shed between herself and the house. The hide worked. She had her post. In two days she would cross the thirty strides to the barn door with the key problem still ahead of her, and no more time to solve it from a distance.

Two days after she tested the hide, Matilda sat in the shed with the lane empty and the barn quiet across the field. The old witch had passed with her basket an hour ago. Matilda had one hour left, maybe less. The hide worked. The window worked. The barn door still had its heavy iron lock, and she still had no key. She had turned the problem over for a week. A crowbar would splinter the wood. A pick would leave scratches on the plate. Any mark on the door would tell the old witch a stranger had come, and the book would be moved before Matilda could try again. She pulled the wand from inside her coat. It was thin silver, worked at the hilt into the shape of a key. She had bought it years ago from a peddler and never used it. The peddler had said it opened any lock once, cleanly, and left no trace. Once. She had saved it for something worth the cost. Matilda crossed the thirty strides at a walk, not a run. Running drew eyes. She kept her head down and the wand flat against her sleeve. At the barn door she pressed the silver tip to the lock and spoke the word the peddler had taught her. The lock clicked. No smoke. No spark. The shackle fell open in her hand. She caught it before it struck the wood. Inside, the barn smelled of hay and honey and old paper. Jars lined the shelves. On a low table under the loft window sat a book bound in dark leather, a small brass clasp holding it shut. Matilda took it. She weighed it in her palm, tucked it under her arm, and stepped back out. She fit the shackle into the plate and pressed it closed. It held. From the lane it would look untouched. She was halfway across the field when she saw the smoke. Not from the cottage chimney. From her own, across the trees, a thin gray line rising where no fire should be burning. Matilda stopped in the grass with the book against her ribs. Someone was in her cottage. She thought of the shelf where she kept the half-brewed potion, and the empty jar where the raven feather had been, and the door she had left latched but not locked. The wand was spent. The book was in her hands. She turned toward the trees and began to run.

Matilda ran through the trees with the stolen book tight against her ribs. The smoke above her cottage was thin and steady, the smoke of a small fire built on purpose. She slowed at the edge of her yard. The bramble vines that wrapped her walls were pushed aside at the door. The latch hung loose. She crouched behind the woodpile and listened. Something inside was breathing hard. Something knocked a jar off the shelf, and glass broke on her floor. Her wand was spent. Her half-brewed potion sat in the cupboard behind her workbench. She had nothing to fight with but the book in her hand, and the book was only paper. She crept to the window and looked in. A small red creature stood on her table. It had horns and a lashing tail, and its fists were clenched at its sides. A rage imp. It had knocked over her kettle and torn the curtain. Steam rose from its shoulders. Matilda knew the rule for these. They fed on anger, and they burned hotter the more you gave them. She set the book down in the grass. She took three slow breaths. Then she opened her own door and stepped inside with her hands empty. The imp turned and snarled. Its eyes were yellow. She did not shout. She did not lift a hand. She walked past it to the hearth, lifted the lid off her cold tea, and poured a cup. She sat in her chair. The imp watched her, waiting for the anger it had come to eat. She gave it none. Its shoulders stopped steaming. Its fists loosened. After a long minute it climbed down from the table, slipped under the door, and was gone into the brambles. Matilda stood up and looked at what the imp had done. The kettle was dented. The curtain was torn. The jar on the floor was one of her empty ones. She crossed to the cupboard behind the workbench and opened it. The half-brewed potion was still there, sealed, untouched. The imp had not known what to take. She sat down on the floor with her back to the cupboard and let her hands shake. Someone had sent the creature. Imps did not wander this far from the deep wood on their own. Someone knew she had left her cottage today, and someone had guessed she would come home too tired to fight. She got up, fetched the book from the grass, and set it on the table beside the dented kettle. She had the recipes now. She had the potion. She was still missing the raven feather, and now she knew she was being watched. She latched the door and drew the bolt she had never used before.

Matilda bolted the door and set the stolen book on the table. The dented kettle rocked once and went still. She wiped soot from her hands on her apron and opened the cover. She had crossed a field and outwitted a locked door for this. She meant to read it now. The pages were thick and stiff. The ink was brown with age. She turned to the first recipe and her stomach dropped. The letters were not letters she knew. They curled and hooked like vines. Some had small marks above them, some below. She could not sound out a single word. She flipped through the whole book. Every page was the same crooked script. She recognized a drawing of a cauldron, a drawing of a moon, a drawing of a root she thought might be moonbloom. That was all. She could match a picture to a jar on her shelf, but she could not read the amounts. She could not read the order. She could not read the warnings. Without the words, the pictures were useless. Behind her, the half-brewed potion sat sealed in the cupboard. She had three days before it soured in the pot. After that the whole batch was waste, and she would have to start again from the beginning. She pulled the cauldron out from under the workbench and set it on the hearth. The green mixture inside had thickened at the edges. She stirred it once with a wooden spoon. It clung to the wood. She had until the next full moon to add the next step, whatever the next step was. She sat down with the book again and tried to match the shapes to any alphabet she had ever seen. She tried the old runes her mother had taught her. She tried the merchant script from the coast towns. Nothing fit. The book was written in a hand she did not know, and the witch who wrote it was long dead. She closed the cover. The lock clicked shut on its own. She had stolen a book she could not use. Matilda stood at the window a long time. The brambles around her cottage swayed in a wind she could not feel. Someone had sent the imp today. Someone was watching the cottage now. She could not carry the book to a stranger and ask for a translation. She could not ask the only witch nearby, because the book belonged to that witch. She thought of the one person who still came to her door without a plan against her. The one who brought honey and asked about her hat. She did not know if that person could read old script. She did not know if asking would cost her the potion or the friendship. But the potion would spoil in three days, and she had no other door left to knock on. She banked the fire and began to plan a visit.

Matilda stood at the window until dawn and changed her plan. She would not carry the stolen book to the one friend who still knocked without a plan against her. If she asked, she would have to explain where the book came from. That explanation would end the visits, the shared tea, the silly hats. She needed to read the script on her own. She needed a place with old writing and no watchers. She remembered the small archive at the edge of the village. It sat between two lanes, weathered and quiet. Old villagers left records there. No witch used it. She wrapped the book in a shawl, tucked it under her arm, and walked in before the shops opened. The hut smelled of dust and dry paper. Shelves ran along both walls. Stacked ledgers slumped against carved boxes. Colored glass in the windows threw red and green patches on the floor. No one sat at the desk. A ledger lay open with a pen beside it. Matilda signed a false name and stepped between the shelves. She worked fast. She pulled down anything old. Village birth rolls. Marriage lists. A prayer book with faded ink. She opened each one and compared the letters to the shapes in her book. Curls. Hooks. Small marks above and below. Nothing matched. She reached the last shelf and found a thin bundle tied with string. The label said only "south road, foreign hand." She untied it. Inside were three letters written in the same crooked script as the book. She almost laughed. Someone had also written a translation on the back of each page, in a plain village hand. The letters were shopping lists. Salt. Wool. Two hens. But the alphabet was there, letter by letter, matched to letters she knew. She copied the whole alphabet onto a scrap of paper. Her hand shook. She tested it on the first line of the recipe. The shapes turned into words. "Add moonbloom root at the third hour after moonrise." She turned the page. "Stir until the surface holds a feather." She could read it. All of it. She retied the bundle and slid it back on the shelf. She folded her scrap of paper into her sleeve and walked out into the lane. The book was still stolen. The potion still sat in the cupboard. The watcher was still somewhere in the trees. But she had the key now, and she had not spent her friendship to get it. At her door, she stopped. A jar of honey sat on the step. No note. The lid was clean. Someone had come while she was gone and knew she had been out. Matilda picked up the jar. The friendship was still whole, for now. The watcher had moved closer.

Matilda spread the deciphered recipe on her kitchen table and read the last line aloud. "Three drops of silken dew, gathered at first light." She read it again. She did not know what silken dew was. She checked her own herb jars, her mother's old notes, the margins of the stolen book. Nothing. The half-brewed potion sat in the cupboard in its stoppered jar. Three days. After that the base would turn and she would have to start over, with a book she could barely hide and a watcher creeping closer every day. She tried the obvious guesses first. Morning dew off a leaf. Dew from a rose petal. She squeezed both into a saucer and held them to the light. Plain water. The recipe called for something with a name, not a puddle. Old names meant old people. She thought of the one place in the forest witches used to trade before her time, a small hut past the second stream. She had passed it as a girl and never gone in. She wrapped a shawl over her head and walked. The hut leaned under a thatch roof gone gold with age. Vines climbed the boards. Green shutters hung open around a clouded window. Small bottles sat on a shelf below the sill, dusty, still corked. No smoke rose from the chimney. The herbalist was long gone. Matilda stepped onto the plank and tried the door. It swung. Inside, jars lined every wall. She read labels by the window. Foxglove. Nettle. Bat wort. Then, on a low shelf, a small glass box tied with red thread. The label read: silken dew. She lifted the lid. Inside lay a web strung between four twigs, each strand hung with tiny beads of water that caught the light like glass. A card beneath it said, in the same crooked script she had learned to read, dew gathered from spider silk at first light. A voice behind her said, "You are far from your cottage." Matilda turned. Angela Ant stood in the doorway, small and orange, her pack strapped across her chest. Matilda's throat tightened. The ant she had poisoned. The ant who now walked with Summer Sun. "I followed you," Angela said. "She asked me to watch the hill." "Then you have seen enough," Matilda said. She set the glass box in her basket. Angela looked at the box. "Spider silk. First light. I know a web." Matilda stared. "Why tell me." "She trusts you a little now," Angela said. "I do not. I want to see what you do next." Matilda took the box home and set it beside the potion. She had the ingredient. She also had a witness. Tomorrow at dawn the ant would be at her door, watching her drip three beads into the jar, and Summer Sun would hear every word of it by breakfast.

At dawn Angela was already on the step. Matilda opened the door and found the small orange ant waiting with her pack strapped tight. The glass box of spider silk sat on the table behind Matilda, beside the stoppered jar. Three drops. That was all it took to finish. And an ant with a mouth that reported to Summer Sun would see every move. Matilda thought fast. If she turned Angela away, Summer Sun would hear it by noon. She would know Matilda had something to hide, and the thin trust between them would snap. If she let the ant watch, Summer Sun would hear the recipe read aloud. "Come in," Matilda said. "I have something for you first." She went to the shelf and lifted down a heavy book she had kept since her mother's time. The cover was purple and gold, set with a keyhole and painted stars. She had never opened it in front of anyone. She set it on the rug by the window where the light was best. "An old book of tales," Matilda said. "The pictures move if you sit still. Ants your size take a long while to read a page." Angela climbed onto the cover. The keyhole flickered. A tiny castle rose from the paper and turned in the air. "I will watch you brew," Angela said. She did not look up. "I need to fetch the last herb from the garden," Matilda said. "Stay warm. I will be back." Angela's antennae twitched. "How long." "Long enough for one story." Matilda tucked the jar and the glass box into her basket. She stepped out the back door and did not stop at the garden. She walked past the beans, past the peach sapling, into the brambles behind the cottage. Under a mound of earth and stone sat a low wooden door she had dug herself years ago. She lifted the latch and went down. The cellar smelled of cold clay. She set the jar on the shelf. She opened the glass box. With a pin she lifted one bead of dew from the web and tipped it into the jar. Two. Three. The potion turned from green to black and held. She stoppered it and pressed the cork with wax from a candle she kept below. When she came back up, Angela was still on the book. A paper dragon circled her head. "Herb picked," Matilda said. She showed an empty sprig she had grabbed at the door. Angela looked at her a long moment. "You were gone eleven minutes." "The garden is not close." "Your boots are clean." Matilda said nothing. Angela climbed down from the book. She walked to the door and stopped on the sill. "I will tell her you brewed something," Angela said. "I did not see what." Then she was gone across the yard, back to Summer Sun.