Mothman crouched inside the hollow tree, watching the village through the round wooden door. Glowing fungi lit his gray wings. He had two days left to save them all. The bridge would fall. He knew it like he knew his own heartbeat. Outside, the old stone bridge sagged. Cracks ran through its weathered arch. Grass pushed through missing chunks. Villagers still crossed it every hour, baskets in hand, never looking up. Mothman tried again. He flew low over the path, arms wide. A mother screamed and pulled her child away. A farmer dropped his sack and ran. Three tries now. Three failures. His warnings sounded like roars to their ears. He landed beside a haunted willow, breath shaking. A bright dragonfly drifted past his face. It hovered. It was not afraid. It looked at him like he was just another swamp creature, nothing more. Mothman watched it dance away toward the bridge. Something shifted inside him. If he could not speak to the villagers, he would have to find someone they would listen to. He turned back to his glowing tree and started planning. The direct path was closed. He needed a messenger.

Mothman left his hollow tree at dusk. He stopped first at the village's posting board, scanning the pinned notes for a name the villagers trusted. One paper appeared again and again: readings, blessings, guidance. Mothette. He had not seen her in weeks. His wings felt heavy as he turned toward the swamp's edge. Her lavender tent glowed under the stars, soft and warm. Mothman ducked inside. Mothette looked up from her cards and froze, then softened. He spoke plainly. The bridge was dying. He had two days. The villagers ran from him every time. Mothette listened without flinching. Her small hands trembled over the deck. She drew one card, then another. Her face went still. "They'll listen to me," she said. "I don't know if I deserve that. But I'll use it." She wrapped her starry shawl tight and stepped out beside him. For the first time in three days, Mothman was not alone with the weight. The messenger was found. Now they had to reach the village before the wood gave way.

They reached the edge of the village before moonrise. Mothman stayed back among the reeds while Mothette walked into the lamplight alone. Her starry shawl caught the glow of the torches. A dragonfly drifted past her shoulder and vanished. She turned once to look at him, then kept walking. Villagers gathered fast around her. She held up both hands and spoke plainly. She told them the bridge was failing. She told them the wood was already groaning if they stopped to listen. She told them the creature they had been running from was not hunting them. He had been trying to warn them. She said his name. The crowd went quiet, then loud. A man near the front said he had heard the bridge creak that morning and thought it was the wind. A woman said her son crossed it twice a day. Mothette did not raise her voice. She said, I have been wrong about small things before. I am not wrong about this. Go and listen to the wood yourselves. Then decide. A cluster of them broke off toward the bridge with lanterns. Mothman watched from the reeds as they leaned over the rail and cupped their ears. One of them stepped back fast. Another called for rope and planks. Someone ran back toward the village shouting for the carpenter. A small bright shape, a forest fairy or a trick of the light, darted along the rail and was gone. Mothette found Mothman in the dark and touched his wing. They believe you, she said. They are going to try to shore it up tonight. Relief hit him and then thinned. The villagers were on the bridge now, crowding the failing wood with their tools and their weight. He could hear the groan of it from here, louder than yesterday. Mothette heard it too. Her hand tightened on his wing. The warning had landed. The danger had not.

By dawn the villagers were already on the bridge with hammers and rope. Mothman crouched at the near bank and listened to the wood talk. Every step they took pulled a new sound out of the planks. A man knelt at the center span to drive a nail, and the beam under him dipped half an inch. Mothman spread his wings before he thought about it. Mothette caught his shoulder. If you fly out there now, she said, they scatter, and half of them go into the water. She was right, and it hurt. They worked out a system instead. Mothette walked the bridge with the carpenter and pointed where Mothman told her to point. He stayed low over the water beneath the span, close enough to see every crack from below, and he called up to her in the small voice he used only with her. She translated. Third beam from the post is splitting, don't stand there. The joint on the north side is loose, brace it before you load it. She never once said his name to the crew, but she kept turning back to the reeds to check his face. A boy dropped a bucket of nails through a gap and Mothman caught it against his chest above the water. Nobody saw him do it. Mothette saw. She pressed her palm flat to the rail where he'd been and kept walking. Something moved in him then that had nothing to do with the bridge. He watched her steady a stranger's hands and explain a load-bearing joint she had learned about an hour ago, and he understood, plainly, that he loved her. Not as gratitude. Not as need. He loved the way she kept correcting herself out loud until she got it right. He kept the thought to himself. There was still a bridge to hold up. By late afternoon the worst of the span was braced. The carpenter called the crew off and told them to cross one at a time, slow. They did. The wood groaned but held. Mothette came down the bank to where Mothman waited in the reeds. Her shawl was smudged and her hands were shaking. They're across, she said. All of them. He wanted to say the other thing and didn't. He said, the middle beam is still going to fail. Maybe not today. She nodded, because she had heard it groan too. Tomorrow we tell them it isn't finished, she said. Tonight let them think they won something. She leaned her forehead against his for one second and then stepped back. Mothman looked at the bridge in the low light. It was standing. It was not saved.

Morning came gray and wet. The crew was back on the bridge before Mothman expected. Mothette had gone to fetch the carpenter, to tell him about the middle beam, and Mothman waited under the arch where the reeds hid him. Three men knelt over the center span with a saw and a fresh plank. One of them leaned too far and the beam gave a long, low crack. Mothman moved without deciding to. He came up under the span and pushed his shoulder against the sagging wood before the man's knee could punch through it. The man saw him. He shouted. The others turned and saw the wings, the wide flat eyes, the pale face pressed up against the underside of their bridge. One dropped his hammer. It hit the water. A frog on the bank leapt sideways into the reeds. Mothman did not move. He kept his shoulder where it was because if he pulled back, the plank would drop the man into the lake. He held the wood and watched the men decide whether to run. Mothette came around the bend at a run, shawl askew, breath short. She stopped at the near post and put both hands up, palms out. That's him, she said. That's the one who told me about the beam. He's holding it up right now. Look. She pointed at Mothman's shoulder braced against the wood. Look where he is. If he wanted to hurt you he wouldn't be there. The men looked. The carpenter came down from the far post, slow, and knelt at the edge of the plank. He put his hand on the wood next to Mothman's shoulder and felt the give. He said, get me the long brace. Nobody moved. He said it again and the youngest boy ran. Mothette stayed at the post with her hands up until the brace was in and Mothman could ease his weight off. The carpenter looked at Mothman for a long second and nodded once. Then he went back to work. Mothman climbed the bank and folded his wings and sat down hard in the moss. Mothette came and sat beside him. Her hands were still shaking. You did it, she said. He shook his head. You did it, he said. She said, we did it, and corrected herself. You held the beam. I just told them what they were looking at. He wanted to confess his love to her. He opened his mouth and what came out was, thank you. She smiled at the bridge, not at him. On the span, the carpenter was calling for more wood. The middle beam was still not fixed. But the men were working near Mothman now, and one of them had waved. Something had moved that would not move back. The bridge would be okay, and so would Mothman. Now, there’s the matter of confessing to Mothette…

The crew worked through the afternoon. Mothman stayed under the span and passed up braces when the carpenter asked. By dusk the middle beam held better than it had all week. Mothette waited on the bank with her shawl pulled tight. When the men packed their tools and walked back toward the village, she stood and brushed moss from her legs. Come on, she said. You've been under a bridge for two days. She led him along the reed path to her tent, a lavender thing sewn with pale stars, tucked between two willows. Inside, she lit a small lamp and put a kettle on a flat stone. Mothman sat with his wings folded and his hands on his knees. He had rehearsed the sentence at least forty times under the bridge. He opened his mouth. What came out was, the middle beam is better. She looked at him. I know, she said. You told me an hour ago. She poured the tea. He tried again. He said, Mothette. She waited. He looked at the lamp instead of at her. The words stuck behind his teeth like wet leaves. She set the cup down and watched him struggle. Then she reached into a cloth bag and pulled out a deck of tarot cards, worn at the corners, painted in gold and dark blue. She fanned the deck across the floor between them. Pick one, she said. He touched a card with one claw. She turned it over. A figure with wings, standing at the edge of a cliff, holding a lantern. She looked at the card a long time. Then she looked at him. You didn't come to Mothette weeks ago because you needed a messenger, she said. You came because you love her. Me. She stopped and pressed her palm to her forehead. I'm sorry. I'm doing it wrong. She lowered her hand. Is that what you're trying to say? He nodded once. He could not make his throat work. She let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for days. Okay, she said. Okay. Because I've been afraid I made that up. I thought I was reading a thing that wasn't there and it would steer us wrong. She reached across the cards and took his hand. Her fingers were warm and small against his. Neither of them spoke for a while. Then she said, I love you too. He nodded, smiling. She did not let go of his hand. Outside, the frogs started up.

Outside, the frogs kept up their noise. Inside the lavender tent, Mothette still held Mothman's hand. He should have felt only her warmth. Instead something else was pressing at the back of his skull, a shape he couldn't name. He tried to focus on it and the shape slid sideways. He blinked slowly. His antennae drooped against his head. Mothette watched him. What is it, she said. His mouth opened. Something is coming, he said. Not the bridge. Something else. She sat up straighter. Where. When. He tried to picture it and the picture blurred. I can't see it, he said. I can feel it moving toward the village but I can't tell them what it is. I need to know what it is or the warning won't work again. He pressed both hands against his eyes. His wings twitched and drooped. She let go of his hand and stood. You haven't slept in three days, she said. He started to argue. She cut him off. You told me yourself. Two days under the bridge, one night before that walking the falls. Your foresight isn't broken. You are. She crossed the tent and pulled a folded blanket from a chest. Then she took down a book from a shelf above the lamp, a heavy thing bound in dark blue with gold work on the cover. She set it beside the blanket. Lie down, she said. He didn't move. Mothette, he said. If I sleep and it comes tonight. She knelt in front of him. Then you'll see it clearly in the morning and you'll be able to say what it is, she said. Right now you can't. Right now you're guessing. Guessing is how we steer people wrong. He folded slowly onto the blanket. His wings sagged open across the tent floor. She sat beside him with the book on her lap and opened it to a blank page. What is that, he said. A dream diary, she said. I write down what I see when I sleep. Sometimes it helps me sort what's real from what I wanted. She uncapped a small pen. I'll write down whatever you say tonight. Even if it's nonsense. Especially if it's nonsense. He closed his red eyes. The shape at the back of his skull was still there, but softer now, waiting. Mothette, he said. If I say a word. Any word. She said, I'll write it. Sleep. He slept. Somewhere past midnight he stirred and said a single word she did not recognize. She wrote it down. She wrote the time beside it. Then she sat with the pen in her hand and watched him breathe, and the shape he could not name kept moving toward the village in the dark.