Myrtle Bogwater had been the village witch of Frog Hollow for exactly six days when the sick man pounded on her door. She was still unpacking dried mushrooms onto her shelves. The sign outside her cabin promised a panacea, one potion for any ailment, brewed by her own hand. She had not brewed it yet. She did not know how. The man leaned against her doorframe, gray-faced, coughing wet into his sleeve. His wife held him up. She said the fever had come in the night and would not break. She said the elders had told her Myrtle could fix anything. She held out a copper coin and a wax-stopped jar of honey as payment. Myrtle looked past them at the muddy path. Half the village had followed. They stood at her fence with folded arms, waiting to see what a witch was worth. If she turned the man away on day six, she would be a joke by day seven. If she gave him swamp water and lies, he would die and she would be worse than a joke. She let them inside. She sat the man by the fire and pressed her palm to his forehead. The heat was real. She thought of what she had. Willow bark for fever. Boiled marsh mint for the cough. A pinch of bog arrow pellet she had been saving, because a trader from the fen had sworn it pulled poison out of blood. None of it was a panacea. All of it was honest. She brewed the tea in front of them so they could see her hands. She told the wife the truth. "This will bring the fever down tonight. It will not cure him. Bring him back tomorrow and I will have more." The woman's mouth tightened. The husband drank. Within an hour his shivering eased and he slept on Myrtle's floor. The village at the fence watched him breathe and slowly went home. The wife left the honey. She took the coin back. Myrtle stood over the sleeping man and counted what she had left. Two days of willow bark. A thumb of bog arrow pellet. A promise she had made out loud, in front of witnesses, to have more tomorrow. She had bought one night. She needed ingredients she did not own, from places she had never crossed, and she needed them before the fever came back. She pulled a map from her satchel and set it on the table. At its center, past the fen, someone had inked a drowned oak.