Mistress May pressed her palm against the barred window of the wooden shed and counted the slow breaths inside. Six bone-plated salamanders left. This morning there had been eight. She wanted the oracle's seat in the cathedral more than she wanted air, but she could not chase that dream while her livelihood rotted in a pen. She lifted the old glass jar from her belt. Cloudy amber fluid sloshed inside, a tincture she had mixed since she was twelve. She uncorked it and dabbed the liquid on each plated snout. The beasts hissed. One did not hiss at all. Outside, the slab field had grown again. Wooden crosses leaned over fresh concrete markers, wilted blooms pressed between them. She had buried two more before breakfast. The smell crept under the shed door. A flash of orange darted across the rafters. A bright little gecko with ember markings clung to the beam, watching her work. It had wandered in days ago and never sickened. May stared at it. Whatever the plague was, it skipped that small body clean. She caught the gecko in her jar and sealed the cork. She would scrape its skin, test its blood, learn what kept it whole. By dusk the last salamander stopped breathing. Her herd was gone. But the gecko pressed its pads to the glass, alive, and May's hands were finally free.

May tucked the cork-stopped jar into her coat and left the slab field behind. The little ember gecko scratched at the glass as she walked the wet road to the cathedral. She would not wait another season. She would ask to be tested for the oracle's seat today. The iron gate met her first. A bell hung from its frame, and a fresh chalk mark streaked the bars. Unclean. Word of her dead herd had run ahead of her. A robed figure stepped from the shadow and rang the bell once, soft and final. "No pen-hands past the gate. Not until the sickness clears." May's jaw tightened. She lifted the jar so the gecko's bright belly pressed the glass. "This one lived in my shed while the rest died. It is clean. I am clean. Test me here at the bars if you must." The robed figure studied the gecko, then her hands, then the weathered crosses visible down the road behind her. A pause. Then a shake of the head. The bell rang twice. The bars stayed shut. "Come back when a season passes with no new graves. Not before." May walked back past the wooden crosses with the jar warm against her ribs. The seat was still out of reach, but the gecko was hers, and a season was a thing she could count. She would spend it proving the small bright body in her hands.