Sterling Forge pulled the fourth blade from the coals and knew before it hit the anvil that he had lost it again. The tip glowed cherry. The middle sulked orange. The base was almost black. He hammered anyway, because hope was cheaper than iron, and watched the steel bow sideways like a wet reed as it cooled. He swore and set it in the scrap pile with the other three. Silver he could coax. Silver forgave a slow hand and a cold corner. Steel did not. A sword needed the whole length hot at once, and his forge, for all its stone and bellows, ran hotter at the throat than at the mouth. Every blade he drew came out warped. Every warp meant he was no closer to the sword he had been drawing on scrap paper for months, the one he kept promising himself was possible. He shoved open the door and stepped out into the square for air. The fountain trickled. The cobblestones were slick with frost. He tipped his head back to cool his face and caught movement across the square instead. A figure in a dark cloak moved along the far wall, hugging the shadows. The hood slipped for one step and he saw pale purple hair beneath it. Linny. He should have gone back inside. She had made herself clear. She had called his warnings hypocrisy. Even after he helped save her father, once Lena and Nell were married, she turned her back to him again. The last he had heard she had turned the shop into her studio and her sister worked out of Nell’s cabin. But art didn’t require sneaking. Still, whatever she was doing at this hour was not his business. But Linny had a habit of walking straight into things that ate people. He wiped his hands on his apron and followed. She cut across the square and around the corner toward the library. He kept a wall between them. She stopped at the side door, glanced once over her shoulder, and knelt. Metal scraped in the lock. The door gave. Sterling caught it before it swung shut and slipped inside behind her. She was already up the aisle, a small lantern hooded in her palm, moving like she knew exactly which shelf she wanted. He stepped on a loose board. She spun. The lantern flared. Her other hand came up with a short iron blade — one of his — leveled at his throat. "Forge." Flat. Not a question. "Put that down." "You followed me." "You're breaking into the library." "Then leave." He did not leave. He looked past her at the shelf she had been reaching for. Bound ledgers. Scrolls and maps. Old ones. The kind that logged the woods she nearly died entering. "You're here for a map," he said. She lowered the blade an inch. "It’s none of your business.” He snarled and stepped closer. “Surely you know by now that’s not true.”

Linny didn't lower the blade the rest of the way. She held it steady between them, the lantern shaking a little in her other hand. The library smelled like old paper and cold stone. Somewhere above, wind pushed at the tower windows. "You almost died out there," Sterling said. "Your sister carried you back half dead. And you're going again." "I'm going again." "Then you're stupid." The word landed. She blinked once. The blade did not move. "Say it again," she said. "Stupid. You heard me. You chase a place three dead painters drew, and you think a map will save you. A map didn't save you last time. Nell saved you. A witch saved you. I forged the knife in your hand." "This time is different." "That's what people say before they don't come back." "I have the old routes now." She tilted her chin at the shelf. "The ones they locked away. I'll know where the ridge breaks. I'll know where the creek turns. I won't walk blind." "You'll walk bleeding. The fae have your scent. You told me that yourself." "Lena can make another band." "You think she’d let you go? I’m guessing she doesn’t even know you’re here. Stealing. Again." Her mouth tightened. She set the lantern on a low shelf so she could keep the blade up with both hands steady. Her coat sleeves were streaked with dried paint. Her hat sat crooked from the climb through the window. "I worried," he said. It came out rougher than he meant. "The whole time you were out there. I couldn't work. I drew swords I couldn't forge and I waited for someone to knock on my door and tell me they found your coat." "Then don't wait this time." "Linny." "Go home, Forge." "I'm not going to stand here and watch you get yourself killed." "Then don't watch." He stared at her. She stared back. Her eyes were wet but her hand was not. She meant it. She would go tonight or tomorrow or the night after. She would go with the map or without it. Nothing he said would sit her down. He stepped back. His boot found the loose board again. He let it creak. "Fine," he said. "Get killed. I'm done caring, waiting around for some sense to smack you across the head." He turned before she could answer. He walked out the side door and did not close it softly. The cold hit his face in the alley. His hands were shaking. He shoved them in his apron. He crossed the square toward the smithery and did not look back. The forge was still warm when he pushed the door open. The four warped blades lay in the scrap pile where he'd left them. He stood over the anvil a long time. Then he picked up the least ruined blade, the one with the cherry tip and the sulking middle, and turned it in his hands. With a hard set jaw he set it down. He stoked the coals with purpose.

Sterling worked the coals until dawn. He drew two blades from the same billet, folding the steel again and again, chasing even heat down the length. The first came out clean. The second cooled with a hairline crack near the tang, thin as a hair, hidden under the scale. He found it on the second grind. He ran his thumb over it and knew a hard strike could split it. He wrapped both in oilcloth anyway. Two blades were better than one. He would carry the cracked one himself. He slept two hours on the shop floor. When night came again he crossed the square with the blades under his coat. Her window was latched but loose. He worked it open and climbed through. Linny sat cross-legged on the bed with a journal open on her knees. A candle burned low beside her. She was painting a shape onto the page, something with too many sides. She saw him and her hand jerked. A line of blue ran off the edge. "You could knock," she said. "You'd have locked me out." "Yes." He set the bundle down on the quilt. He did not unwrap it. He sat on the trunk at the foot of the bed. His shoulder still ached where the fae had opened it. "How do you know it's different this time," he said. She closed the journal on her thumb. "I know." "That's not an answer." "It's the one you get." He waited. She turned the journal on her knee and did not look at him. On the trunk his hands hung between his boots. He made them stay there. "I brought two," he said. "If you want one, tell me. If you don't, I go home." She watched him for a long moment. Then she opened the journal again and turned it toward the candle. Page after page of the same place, painted from angles she had never stood at. Light that moved wrong. A hill. A door in the hill. A girl standing beside it in a green dress with no shoes. "I didn't paint her," Linny said. "She shows me. I found this last time. In the hollow under the frostwood." She tapped her journal. "And now I have the key." "A key to what." "The door that kept me out. The one I couldn’t see." He looked at the painted girl. He looked at Linny. Her face was tired and certain. "I want a blade," she said. He unwrapped the good one and laid it across the quilt. He kept the cracked one under his coat. “I made a mistake last time, Lin.” “Telling me to give up my dream? That it was stupid?” “No.” He still thought that. “Trying to talk you out of it for one. And letting you go alone.” She was silent. “I was a coward. I didn’t even go after you.” He placed his hand on the other bundle. “I won’t make that mistake again. I’m coming with you.” She laughed. “No.” “I didn’t ask,” he bit. “I’ll follow behind if you say no, or you could let me join, and prove me wrong. But I’m coming.” She did not tell him no again. She picked up the blade with a slight grin and tested its weight. Then she blew out the candle.

Sterling woke before the candle guttered. Linny was already dressed, the good blade wrapped in oilcloth beside her boots. Gray light bled through the shutters. Dawn was maybe an hour off. He sat up on the trunk and felt the crack in his own blade press against his ribs through his coat. "The fae have your scent," he said. "We don't cross the ridge without something to cover it." "I know." "Then what." She pulled on her painted hat. "Not Lena. She'd tie me to the bedpost." She looked at him flat. "She used thread last time. It ran out. I'm not asking her again." He stood. "Then who." "You." She opened the door. They went down the narrow stairs. Her father sat by the low fire in a clean shirt, color back in his cheeks for the first time in months. A cup steamed in his hand. Glen looked up when they hit the last step. His eyes moved over the bundle under Linny's arm and the sword-shape under Sterling's coat. He did not stand. "You're going," Glen said. Not a question. "Yes," Linny said. He looked at Sterling. Sterling met it. He had known this man since he was a boy bringing spoons up the lane. "Bring her back," Glen said. "I will." Glen nodded once and turned his face to the fire. Linny bent and kissed the top of his bald head, quick, like she was afraid to linger. Then she was out the door and Sterling followed. The smithery was cold. He hadn't banked the coals. Linny went straight to the slack tub and past it to the back wall where yesterday's fire lay dead in the hearth. She dropped to her knees and started scooping ash into a clay jar with her bare hands. "What are you doing," he said. "It worked last time." "What worked." "Ash. On my skin, in my hair. I walked past three of them at the tree line and they didn't turn." She kept scooping. Gray smeared up her wrists. He watched her fill the jar. He thought about Lena's thread and how it had dissolved on her in the square. He thought about the dawn coming. He had nothing better. He knelt beside her and used the small shovel and filled a second jar to the lip. She sat back on her heels and looked at him. Her hands were black. There was a streak of gray across her cheek where she had pushed her hair aside. "You believe me," she said. "No." He capped the jar. "But I'm coming." She almost smiled. She stood, tucked one jar into her coat pocket, and gave him the other. He slid it into the pouch at his hip beside the cracked blade. Outside, the sky had turned the color of pewter. They walked toward the ridge.

They took the lane behind the smithery to skirt the square. Sterling kept one hand on the cracked blade under his coat. The ash jar knocked his hip with every step. Linny walked half a pace ahead, hat pulled low. The village was still asleep. Smoke rose from three chimneys. The ridge road began past the last well. Two men stepped out from the alley by the cooper's shed. A third came around the well behind them. Sterling knew all three by face. They worked for the governor. The one in front carried a cudgel. The other two carried nothing, which was worse. "Miss Marsh." A fourth voice, from the mouth of the lane. Calloway Hild walked into the gray light with his hands folded behind his back. His spectacles caught what little there was. He wore his good coat. "And the smith. Out early." "Move," Linny said. "I can't do that." Hild stopped six paces off. "Word came to me last night that you meant to cross the ridge at dawn. After what visited the square. After the dead we buried." He glanced at Sterling. "I won't lose more villagers to that woods for a girl's sketchbook." "You don't decide where I go," Linny said. "I decide who leaves the village during a curfew." Hild tilted his head. "Go home. Both of you. Tomorrow we'll speak about it properly." Sterling read the men behind him. The cudgel was for show. The empty hands were for holding Linny while the cudgel worked on him. He had two seconds before Hild gave the nod. He pulled the ash jar from his pouch and threw it hard at the cobbles between them. The clay burst. Gray hearth-ash rose in a cloud and hung in the still air. Sterling grabbed Linny's wrist and pulled her sideways into the cooper's alley. The men shouted. Someone coughed. Hild's voice cut through, sharp, giving orders. They ran. Linny knew the back ways better than he did. She took him past the seamstress shop and up the goat path that climbed toward the tree line. His shoulder wound pulled with every stride. He did not slow. They stopped only when the village was below them and the pines began. Linny bent with her hands on her knees. Her hat was gone. Her hair had come loose. There was ash in it. "That was our mask," Sterling said. "I have yours." She patted her coat pocket. The second jar was still there. "One jar. For both of us. Days out." "Then we ration and gather more when we can." She straightened. She looked back down at the roofs. "He'll send men after us." "He'll send them up the ridge road. Not this way." She looked at him. Something in her face softened for a breath. Then she turned and started up through the pines. Sterling followed. The snow began under his boots before he had climbed a hundred paces.

The pines thinned above the goat path. Sterling could see the ridge's gray face rising ahead, snow crusted along its ledges. Behind and below, voices carried up through the trees. Hild's men had climbed faster than he'd guessed. Boots crunched maybe three hundred paces down the slope. Someone whistled a signal. Another whistle answered from the east. "They fanned out," Sterling said. He pulled Linny down behind a fallen trunk. "They know we came this way." Linny wiped snow from her knees. "We keep climbing, they see us against the rock." "We stop climbing, they walk right into us." She pointed at a seam of dark stone that cut sideways across the ridge. Snow had drifted deep along its base. "There. We go flat instead of up. Stay under the ledge till the trees pick back up on the far side." "That's an hour on our bellies." "Then it's an hour." He was about to argue when her coat pocket moved. Not shifted. Moved. A small head pushed out from under the flap. Round eyes. Pale pink ears shaped like petals. Snow dust on its fur. A chipmunk, no bigger than his fist, blinked at him. Sterling stared. "Why did you bring that thing." "I didn't." "It's in your pocket." "It climbed in at the tree line. I felt it and left it." She looked down at the animal. It looked back at her. "It's Lena’s." "Linny. It's a chipmunk." "It's the same one." A branch snapped downslope. Closer now. Sterling flattened against the trunk. The chipmunk slipped out of her pocket, hopped onto the log, and ran along it away from the ridge. Ten paces on, it stopped and looked back. Then it ran again, along a line that cut down and across, not up. "It wants us to follow," Linny said. "It wants seeds." "It's leading us off the slope." She was already moving. "Away from the voices." Sterling swore under his breath and followed. The chipmunk kept ten paces ahead, tail flicking, always looking back. The path it picked stayed under the low pine branches where the snow was thin and their tracks would not show. Twice Sterling heard men pass above them, close enough to hear the creak of a belt. The chipmunk froze each time, then moved on. After what felt like a mile, the ground dropped into a narrow cut between two shoulders of rock. The voices were gone. The chipmunk sat at the mouth of the cut and washed its face. Sterling knelt in the snow, breathing hard. His shoulder burned. "Alright," he said. "Alright." Linny crouched and held out her hand. The chipmunk climbed back into her pocket. "Snowcrest is that way," she said, pointing up the cut. "We're past them." Sterling looked at the pocket. Then at her. He said nothing and started walking.

The cut between the rocks opened into a shallow bowl of pines Sterling did not know. The chipmunk had led them off every path he could name. He stopped and turned a slow circle. No trail. No village smoke. The ridge behind them wore a shape he had never seen from this side. "We're off the map," he said. Linny knelt in the snow. The chipmunk climbed out of her pocket and sat on her knee. Its pink tail curled around its feet. Snow dust clung to the petal-shaped ears. "We're past the soldiers," she said. "We're past everything. I don't know which way is Snowcrest. I don't know which way is home." Sterling looked at the trees. The pines here grew taller and closer. Frost lined every branch. "If we walk wrong, we walk into a fae ring before we see it." Linny reached inside her coat. She pulled out the stolen library map, folded small, and spread it flat on her thigh. Her finger moved across it and stopped. "I know where we are." "You've never been here." "I have." She tapped a blank stretch north of the marked path. "The creature that stalked me last time pushed me north. Three ridges. I walked this bowl. I remember the split rock." She pointed behind him. Sterling turned. A pine had grown up through a boulder and cracked it in two. He would not have noticed it on his own. "The door in the hill is here." Her finger slid west along the map, off the inked lines, into the empty paper. "Two days. Maybe less." "Two days through unmarked woods." "I can draw it." She pulled a stub of charcoal from her pocket and began marking the blank paper. A curve for the bowl. A line for a creek she said ran south of them. A small square where the hill rose. She worked fast. The lines were sure. Sterling watched her hand. He had spent months telling her the woods were not a real place. Now she was drawing them from memory, and the drawing matched the ground under his boots. "You're sure." "I'm sure." He crouched beside her. The chipmunk hopped from her knee onto the map, sniffed the charcoal, and hopped off. Linny folded the paper along her new lines and slid it back inside her coat. "West, then," Sterling said. "West." He stood and shifted the pack on his good shoulder. The blade at his hip knocked against his thigh. They were not lost. They were pointed. That was worse in one way and better in every other. If Linny's memory was right, they would reach the hill by dark. If it was wrong, they would sleep in fae country. He stepped after her into the trees.

They walked west through the frostwood cluster until the sun climbed past the branches. The trees here grew close, fine icy limbs tangled overhead into a low ceiling. Snow slid off in soft clumps when Sterling's shoulder brushed a trunk. He kept one hand near the blade at his hip. Linny walked ahead, her painted coat bright against the white. An hour in, the cluster thickened. Every stand of pines looked like the last. Sterling stopped counting the ones they passed. "We came by that split trunk already," he said. "No." "The bark's the same. The lean is the same." "They all lean the same here." She did not turn. "The creek is south. We keep it on our left shoulder. We're fine." He could not hear a creek. He could hear his own breath and the knock of the pack against his back. He stopped. "Linny." She turned. "I can't read this ground," he said. "I don't know south from north under these branches. If you're wrong, we walk in circles until something finds us." She watched him. Her cheeks were pink from the cold. The hat sat crooked from the wind. "I'm not wrong." "You could be." "I could be." She took a step closer. "But I'm what you have. You picked that when you crossed the ridge." He looked at the trees. He wanted a landmark. He wanted a road. He wanted the forge and the anvil and the metal that did what he told it. He had none of that. He had a woman he had once told to stop dreaming, and her memory of a place he had said did not exist. "Say it out loud," she said. "Then I'll walk." "Say what." "That you trust me to bring us out." His jaw worked. The wind moved through the icy branches with a soft rattling sound. "I trust you," he said. "Lead." She nodded once and turned. She did not smile. She did not soften. But her shoulders dropped a small measure, and she stepped off faster than before. Sterling followed. He watched her hand rise now and then to touch a trunk, a stone, a low branch, as if the woods were a page she had drawn once and was reading back. After a long stretch, the ground tipped downward. He heard water under ice. The creek. On their left. Something moved in his coat pocket. The little chipmunk climbed out onto his collar, pink tail curled, petal ears twitching. It sniffed the air west and chirped once, sharp. Linny looked back at him. "That way." "That way," he agreed. They walked.

The light thinned fast under the frostwood. Sterling watched the shadows stretch between trunks and knew they had maybe an hour. Linny kept moving, one hand brushing bark, the other tucked against her ribs for warmth. The chipmunk on his collar had gone quiet. "We need to stop," Sterling said. "Fire. Cover. Now, while I can still see to build it." "Keep walking. Another mile." "No." He caught her sleeve. She turned, ready to argue, and he saw her mouth was pale. Her hand shook where it held her coat closed. He let go of her sleeve. "You're cold through. Don't tell me you aren't." "I'm fine." "You're not. And a fire out here in the open pulls them straight to us. So we don't get an open one." She watched him. He set the pack down and looked at the ground instead of her face. Above them the icy branches wove together into a low, tight ceiling. Snow sat heavy on the boughs. He had an idea, and he did not like it. "Help me," he said. He picked a spot where three trunks grew close. He cut low pine boughs with the flawed blade and stacked them into a wall on the windward side. Linny worked beside him without asking why. She knew tools. She stitched the boughs together with strips torn from the pack straps, quick and neat. The chipmunk hopped down and burrowed into the needle pile she was building for a floor. Sterling dug a pit inside the shelter, small, a hand deep. He lined it with flat stones. Then he stripped his coat off and draped it over the frame above. "Sterling." "Put yours over the other side. Trap the light. Trap the smoke. It'll leak up through the branches slow. Nothing above us to see a flame." "You'll freeze." "I'll sit by the fire. Put it on." She did not move. He looked at her then. Her lips were cracked. There was a bruise of tiredness under each eye. He had promised her father two things in his lifetime. One he’d already broken. The other he’s die before breaking. "Please," he said. She took her coat off and laid it across the frame. She kept the hat. He struck steel to flint over dry needles inside the pit. The flame caught low and small. He fed it thin, splinter by splinter, so it never grew tall enough to touch the coats above. The shelter warmed. Linny sat cross-legged, hands out over the stones. Color came back into her fingers. The chipmunk climbed into her lap and tucked its snow-dusted tail around its feet. "Sleep," Sterling said. "I'll watch it." "You need sleep too." "I'll wake you in a few hours." She lay down on the needles. She was out before he could feed the fire again. He sat with the blade across his knees and listened. Wind. Ice cracking somewhere far off. No wingbeats. No voices. The little fire burned low and hidden, and nothing came for the light.

The fire burned down to coals. Sterling fed it a splinter and blinked hard. His eyes stung. He had promised himself he would wake Linny at the second watch, but every time he looked at her face he found a new reason to wait. An hour. Another hour. The dark outside the pine wall stayed quiet, and quiet felt like a thing he could hold onto if he just did not move. His chin dipped. He caught it. Dipped again. The chipmunk moved first. It sat up in Linny's lap, ears pricked, tail stiff. Its small body faced the gap in the boughs where Sterling had left a sight-line. It made no sound. It stared. Sterling followed its eyes. Between two trunks, low to the snow, something breathed. He saw the breath before he saw the shape. Two pale plumes, steady, close to the ground. Whatever it was, it was crouched. He reached for the blade across his knees. His hand was slow. He watched his own fingers close on the grip like they belonged to another man. Cold had settled in his shoulders while he sat. His arms felt packed with wet sand. The shape shifted. A long head lifted above the snow line. Yellow eyes. Not fae. A wolf-thing, lean, ribs showing, drawn in by the smell of warmth. Sterling knew he would not get the blade up in time if it came. The chipmunk leapt off Linny's lap onto her collar and bit her ear. Linny came awake with a hiss. She did not speak. She saw Sterling's face, then the gap, then the eyes. Her hand went inside her coat and came out with the ash jar. She was on her knees before Sterling had shifted his weight. "Left of the fire," she whispered. "Get up." He got up. His knees cracked. The wolf-thing came through the boughs low and fast, and Linny threw the jar at its face. Ash burst white. The animal jerked back, blinded, snapping at nothing. Sterling brought the blade down two-handed on the base of its neck. The steel went through. The body dropped across the fire pit and killed the coals in a hiss of steam. They stood in the dark, breathing. Linny found his sleeve. "You were asleep." "Almost." "You should have woken me." "I know." She did not say the rest. She did not have to. He had promised her father and he had come within a chipmunk's tooth of breaking it. He dragged the carcass out into the snow. The shelter was ruined, the fire dead, the coats spotted with blood and ash. Dawn was still hours off, and now the smell of a fresh kill would carry. "We walk," Linny said. He nodded. He gave her the blade to hold while he pulled the coats free. From here on, she kept watch too.

They walked until the sky turned the color of old iron. The wolf's blood had frozen on Sterling's sleeve. He kept the blade in his hand instead of his belt. He did not want Linny to see why. When she stopped to check the map, he stepped behind a trunk and turned the steel to the weak light. The edge that had gone through the wolf's neck was gone. A crescent had chipped out of the belly of the blade, wide as his thumbnail. Two smaller nicks flanked it. The metal along the break looked grainy. He had known it would. He had kept this one on purpose because the other was better and he had wanted her to carry the better one. He ran his thumb along the ruined edge. It caught, but it did not cut. He could sharpen the good stretches on a stone tonight and pretend. He would have maybe one clean stroke left in it. Against a wolf, one stroke. Against what waited past the ridge, none. "Sterling." He slid the blade behind his leg. "Coming." She was crouched by a frostwood cluster, the icy branches sagging low around her hat. The chipmunk sat on her wrist, pink ears twitching. She had the map open on her knee. "Half a day to the hill," she said. "Maybe less if the creek's frozen through." "Good." She looked up. Her eyes went to his hand, then to his face. "Show me the blade." "It's fine." "Show me." He brought it around. He turned the flat toward her so the chip sat in shadow. "Wolf hit the pommel side. Handle's loose. I'll wrap it at the next stop." She held his eyes a beat longer than he liked. Then she folded the map. "Wrap it now." "At the next stop." She stood. The chipmunk ran up her sleeve and vanished into her collar. "Fine." She started walking. He watched her back for a moment. She had believed him. Or she had decided to let him have the lie. He could not tell which and he did not ask. He sheathed the ruined blade against his hip and followed. In his head he counted what he had left. A short knife in his boot. A hammer he had not thought to leave behind. His hands. The other blade, the good one, on Linny's belt where he had put it three days ago and could not take back without telling her why. The frostwood thinned. Somewhere ahead the ground would start to rise. He would need a plan before it did. He did not have one yet. He walked faster to keep even with her and kept his sword arm turned away.

They stopped by a downed frostwood to rest. Sterling sat with his back to the trunk and let the ruined blade rest across his knees. He meant to wrap the handle so the lie held. He did not get the chance. Linny crouched in front of him. She held out her hand. "Give it to me." "What?" "The bad one. Trade." She unbuckled the good blade from her belt and set it on the log between them. "I saw the chip yesterday. I saw it when you turned the flat to me. Stop." He closed his hand around the grip. "No." "You can fight. I can't. It makes sense." "No." She did not move. The chipmunk climbed onto her shoulder and sat very still, pink ears twitching at the cold. Snow had settled in its fur like sugar. "Why?" she said. "Because I said so." "That's not a reason." "It's the reason you're getting." She picked up the good blade and held it toward him hilt-first. "Take it. Give me the other one. If something comes out of these trees, you're the one who has to swing." "I said no, Linny." "Why?" He looked past her, at the frostwood, at the pale branches lacing the sky. He said it before he could stop. "I promised your family. I won't let him down again." Her face changed. The blade lowered an inch. "Again?" He did not answer. "Sterling. What do you mean, again?" He tightened his grip on the ruined blade. The grainy metal bit his palm through the wrap. "Take the good one," he said. "Keep it on your belt. That's the trade I'm making." "Answer me." "No." She stared at him. He watched her decide whether to push. She had that look she got before she said something that cut. Then the chipmunk on her shoulder stiffened and turned its head north. Its tail went flat. Linny saw it. She stood. "Later," she said. Not a promise to drop it. A promise to come back to it. She pushed the good blade against his chest until he took it. She lifted the ruined one off his knees before he could stop her and slid it through her belt. "Linny—" "You said you'd swing. So swing." She was already moving, low, toward the cover of the next trunk. "It's closer than yesterday." He stood. The good blade sat right in his hand. It was the first honest weight he had carried in two days. He hated how much lighter he felt. He hated that she had made the choice for him and that the choice was correct. He followed her into the frostwood. The thing she had promised to ask again walked behind him the whole way, heavier than any blade.

They walked until the frostwood thinned and the ground began to slope down toward the sound of moving water. Sterling could hear the river now, a low rush past the last of the pale trees. Linny stopped at a hollow between two roots and dropped her pack. "Here," she said. "We cross in the morning." He nodded and looked back the way they had come. Nothing followed. The good blade sat warm against his hip. The darkness settled in around them the way it had every night, thick and close. He made the fire small and dug it low. Linny fed it twigs one at a time. The chipmunk climbed down her sleeve and pressed itself against her wrist, pink ears twitching at the sparks. Snow still clung in its fur. She looked at Sterling across the coals. "Now," she said. "You said again." He had known it was coming since the frostwood. He set the blade across his knees and did not look up. "I was in love with you, Lin." She went still. "I told your father. Before you ever knew. I said I wasn't ready. I wanted to forge a real sword first. Become a swordsmith. Something that could provide." He turned a stick in the fire. "I asked him if, when the day came, I could have your hand. He said yes." She did not speak. The chipmunk froze on her wrist. "He made me promise one thing. Not to hurt you." Sterling swallowed. "So when you started talking about the woods, and the place, and the light, I told you it wasn't real. I told you to stop. I thought I was keeping the promise. But I drove you out there.” She was silent for a long moment. “I was going anyway, Forge. I’d been planning for month.” "Still, I should’ve come. I should rushed after you. Instead I hid with my anger and you almost died." "I know." "I destroyed us." She stared at the fire a long time. He waited for the cut. It did not come. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and looked at him instead. "You should have believed me." "Yes." "Say it." "I should have believed you. I should’ve believed in you." She nodded once. She pulled the ruined blade from her belt and laid it across her lap, the way he had laid the good one across his. She did not give it back. She did not ask for the good one either. "In the morning," she said, "we cross the river. Then the hill." "Yes." "You carry the good blade. That part stays." "Yes." She lay down with her back to the fire. The chipmunk curled at her throat. Sterling sat watch on the side facing the water. He listened to the river work at the rocks below and understood that she had not forgiven him. She had only decided to keep walking with him until the hill was behind them. That was the trade she was making, and it was more than he had earned.

Sterling woke to snow on his face. The fire was low and the wind had turned. He sat up and saw the river below them gone gray under a sky that had dropped in the night. The first hard flakes came sideways. Within minutes he could not see the far bank. Linny was already up, packing. The chipmunk hid in her collar, its pink ears flat against her neck. She shook snow from her hat and looked at him. "We can't cross in this," she said. "No." He fed the fire the last dry twigs. The wind ate them. The flames leaned, guttered, went blue at the edges. He knew what that meant. In an hour the coals would be dead and the cold would come inside their coats. "Shelter," he said. "Now." They climbed away from the river, back into the frostwood. The trees stood close and white, branches bent under old ice. Snow fell heavier. He could not feel his fingers on the blade. Linny walked ahead with her head down. She kept stopping to check the chipmunk, warming it under her jaw. "Forge." She had stopped. She pointed low, between two roots. A dark mouth in the slope. A cave. He crouched and looked in. The smell hit him before his eyes adjusted. Wet fur. Old meat. A packed dirt floor, and along the back wall a hollow worn smooth by a large body. "Bear," he said. "Is it in there?" He listened. Nothing but the wind at his back. "No. But it lives here." She looked at the storm behind them. The trees were already vanishing. "Then we freeze out here or we sleep in there." "It could come back." "So could the storm end. It won't." He drew the good blade. "Inside." They crawled in. The wind cut off like a closed door. He set the blade across his knees, facing the entrance. Linny broke sticks from the ceiling roots and made a small fire near the mouth, close enough that the smoke pulled out. The chipmunk crept from her collar and sat on her wrist, watching the dark. "I don't want to leave," she said. Not about the cave. He knew what she meant. The hill was close. The door was close. The magic she had chased for years was one river away. "I know." "But we have to." "Tonight we stay." She was shaking. He saw it now, the way her jaw would not sit still. He opened his coat and she came under it without asking. Her back against his chest. The chipmunk between her hands. He kept the blade across his lap and his eyes on the cave mouth. "If it comes," she said, "wake me." "I will." Her breathing slowed. The fire held. Outside the blizzard closed the woods. Sterling watched the dark and listened for a heavier tread beneath the wind, and did not sleep.

The fire burned low near the cave mouth. Sterling fed it a strip of bark and watched the flame catch. Linny had pulled away from him in her sleep. Now she was awake, sitting against the far wall with her knees drawn up, the chipmunk tucked under her chin. Her jaw was shaking again. "Come back to the coat," he said. "I'm fine." "You're shivering." "I said I'm fine." He watched her. She would not look at him. The chipmunk's small ears twitched against her throat. Outside the storm pushed against the slope and the wind found a seam in the roots above them. "If you freeze," he said, "we don't cross the river." "Then I won't freeze." He set the blade down. "What is it." "Nothing." "It's the door. The hill." "No." "Then what." She lifted her head. Her eyes were wet and hard. "You still think it's stupid. Don't you." He opened his mouth. He closed it. He would not lie to her again. "Yes," he said. She nodded once, like she had known. "Then why did you come." "Because I care about you." "People who care support your dreams." Her voice cracked and steadied. "They don't follow you into the woods to prove you wrong." "Like you supported mine." She went still. The chipmunk froze against her neck. "You laughed," he said. "When I showed you the first sketch. You said a spoon-maker had no business drawing swords." "I didn't mean it. I wanted to hurt you the way you had me.” "And you did." She looked at the fire. He watched her throat move. He had wanted to hurt her and he had. It gave him nothing. "We both did," she said. "Yes." "How do we come back from that." He thought. The wind cut. The fire leaned. "By believing in each other more than the doubt," he said. "Mine in you. Yours in me. Even when it looks stupid from the outside." "That's a lot to ask." "I know." She pulled her knees tighter. "What’s the point? What if all were good at is hurting each other." "The point is I love you," he said. "Hurt me again and again, and it won’t matter. I will never stop loving you, Lin." She did not answer for a long time, though tears filled her eyes. The chipmunk crept from her collar and crossed the packed floor to him. Its snow-dusted tail brushed his knee. It sat on his boot and waited. Linny stood up. She crossed the three steps between them and sat down inside his coat. Her back against his chest. Her hands cold on his wrist. "I don't forgive you yet," she said. "I know." "But I'm cold." He pulled the coat tight around her. The chipmunk climbed into her lap. Sterling took up the blade again and set it across both their knees, and outside the storm began to thin. Still, he held her tighter. Tighter than he ever had.

The storm broke near dawn. Sterling eased Linny off his chest and laid her against the cave wall. Her lips were pale. Her coat was soaked through at the shoulders where snow had melted into the wool during the night. His own trousers were stiff with wet from the knee down. The fire had shrunk to a red eye in the ash. Outside, the wind had dropped, but the air that came in through the mouth of the cave bit cold and dry. He touched the back of her hand. It was cold as stone. He checked their pack. Two strips of jerky. A half loaf gone hard. The last ash jar. No dry cloth. If they stepped out like this, she would not last past midday. He knew it the way he knew a bad weld by the sound. He built the fire back up with the last of the bark, then went deeper into the cave. He found a shelf of dry stone at the back. He carried her there. He stripped her wet coat and hat and laid them flat. He pulled off his own shirt and wrung it. Then he stopped. The hammer was still in his belt. The blade was on the floor. He looked at both. He dragged three flat stones from the wall and set them in a ring near the fire. He fed the flame with pine roots he broke from the ceiling. When the stones were hot, he lifted them with the flat of the blade and set them under her coat. He hung the coat on the blade, propped between two rocks. The wool began to steam. The chipmunk climbed out of Linny's lap and sat on the warm stone. Its snow-dusted fur dried in patches. Its petal ears twitched at the heat. It turned in a slow circle and settled, watching him work. He did her hat next. Then his shirt. Then her boots, one at a time, packed with warmed pebbles from the fire ring. The blade held the weight. He fed the fire and turned the cloth and swapped the stones out as they cooled. He worked without stopping for two hours. When the coat was dry, he put it back on her. Her color came up slow. She woke while he was lacing her boots. "You made a forge," she said. "I made a rack." She touched the blade's spine where the wool had hung. The steel was warm. "Even heat," she said. He stopped with the lace in his hand. He had spent a year of nights trying to hold heat down the length of a bar. He had never thought to hang the bar instead of laying it. "Yes," he said. "Even heat." She stood. She took the blade off the stones and handed it to him. "River," she said. He sheathed it. They walked out of the cave into hard cold sun.

They came out of the trees above the ravine by mid-morning. Sterling stopped at the lip and looked down. The water ran fast between two stone walls. Ice chunks turned in the current. A single fallen trunk spanned the gap, its bark glazed white from the blizzard. There was no other crossing for a mile in either direction, and a mile in either direction would put Linny back in wet cold before dark. "That," Linny said, and pointed at the log. Sterling knelt and touched the bark. His glove came away wet. "I go first. I'll knock the worst of the ice off with the hammer. Wait for my hand." "Fine." He stepped out. The trunk was as wide as his shoulders, but the ice made it read like glass. He set his boots flat, one after the other, and struck the top of the log with the flat of the hammer as he went. Shards flaked off and dropped into the water below. The chipmunk rode in Linny's coat pocket and watched him with round eyes. Halfway across, the wind pushed him. He crouched, waited, kept going. He reached the far side and turned. "Come." She stood on the lip and did not move. "I'm scared." He had not heard her say it before. He kept his voice even. "I believe in you." She looked taken back, then she smiled and stepped out. She walked with her arms low and her eyes on the trunk. She moved better than he had. Three steps from him, her boot caught a patch he had missed. Her leg went sideways. She dropped. He threw himself flat and caught her wrist as it passed the edge. Her weight yanked him toward the drop. He locked his elbow against the log. Her boots kicked at nothing above the white water. "I've got you," he said. His arms were stiff from the cold. His shoulders burned. He pulled. Her other hand found his sleeve. He pulled again, and this time she came up over the bark and onto him, and they both fell backward onto the frozen dirt of the far bank. She lay on his chest. Her hat had slid off. Her breath went across his cheek in short warm bursts. He waited for her to push up and stand. She did not. She lifted her head and kissed him. It wasn’t brief, but deep with longing. Longing to replace the time they waisted hating each other. When she pulled back, she looked at him like she was checking a line she had drawn. "Alright," she said. "Alright," he said, hiding the smile as it but his cheeks. She stood and offered her hand. He took it. The chipmunk climbed out of her pocket and shook itself. Across the ravine, the trees they had come from looked small. Ahead, the ground sloped up toward the hill. She had not said she forgave him. But she had crossed to him, and she had kissed him, and she was still holding his hand when they started to climb.

They climbed the slope hand in hand until the trees thinned. The hill sat alone above a field of white. Sterling stopped when he saw it. A pale glow leaked out of the hillside where no glow should be. A flat stone stood set into the dirt like a door with no handle. Light bled from a seam down its middle, warm at the core, cold blue at the edges. "That's it," Linny said. She let go of his hand and ran the last of the way. Sterling followed, hand on the hammer at his belt. He touched the stone. It was warm. The seam of light ran from top to bottom, thin as a thread. He pressed the edges. Nothing moved. Linny knelt in the snow and pulled a small jar from her coat. She tipped it. A few gray flakes fell into her palm. The last of the ash. "Rub it on the seam," she said. "The girl showed me. In the vision." He did. The ash caught in the light and hissed. The stone did not open. Linny sat back. Her face went blank the way it did when she was thinking hard. The chipmunk climbed out of her pocket and sat on her knee, ears twitching. Below the hill, far off, something cracked in the trees. A branch, or a step. Sterling turned toward the sound. "Linny." "I know." She closed her eyes. "The girl showed me a hand. Not a key. A hand." "What does that mean." "She showed me the light moving. Up, then down. Then across." She opened her eyes and looked at the seam. She raised her hand and drew a line in the air along it, top to bottom. Then across, left to right. A cross. Nothing. Sterling watched the tree line. A shape moved between two trunks and stopped. Then another. He drew his blade. "Try it on the stone," he said. "Not the air." She pressed her palm to the seam and dragged it down. The light followed her hand like water. She stopped at the bottom, turned her palm sideways, and drew across. The stone split. The two halves swung inward without a sound. Warm air rolled out. Inside, a low tunnel led down, lit by the same soft glow held inside the stone itself. "Go," Sterling said. She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him with her. The chipmunk leapt to her shoulder. They ducked through together. Behind them, something crossed the snow at a run. The stone doors swung shut. The seam sealed. The sound outside cut off like a door slammed on a storm. They stood in the warm light, breathing hard. Linny's hand was still on his sleeve. Ahead, the tunnel sloped down into a glow that had no source he could name. "We're in," she said. Sterling nodded. He did not lower the blade.

The tunnel sloped down until it opened into a room that was not a room. Sterling stopped at the edge. The floor ahead broke into three passages, each cut smooth into the rock, each lit by the same sourceless glow. No mark showed above any of them. He watched the air in front of each opening for a draft. All three breathed warm. "Which one," he said. Linny stood beside him. Her chipmunk sat still on her shoulder, ears folded flat. She did not answer. She stared at the middle passage, then the left, then the right. Her hand went to her temple. "The girl showed me the door," she said. "She didn't show me this." Sterling knelt and looked at the floor. Old dust, undisturbed. No prints. He drew his knife and scratched a small mark on the wall by the entrance so they could find their way back. If back was still a place. "Pick," he said. "You've been right every time." "I haven't been right. I've been guessing between visions." "Then guess." She closed her eyes. He waited. He counted his own breath to keep from pushing her. The chipmunk lifted its nose and turned toward the right passage, then the left, then sat down again. No help there. Linny opened her eyes. "I can't see it. She's not showing me." Sterling looked at the three mouths of stone. Wrong choice, and they walked deeper into something they could not walk out of. He thought of the ash jar, empty in her pocket. He thought of the door that had sealed behind them. He put his hand on her shoulder. "What did she show you last? Before the door." "Light," Linny said. "Streams of it. Going up out of a tree. Colors I don't have names for." "Up." "Up." He looked at the three passages again. The left one sloped down. The middle one ran flat. The right one climbed, a shallow rise cut into the rock. "Right," he said. She looked at him. "You're sure." "No. But she showed you up. That one goes up." Linny nodded once. She took his hand. They walked into the right passage. It climbed for a long time. The glow thickened. The air grew softer, then sweet, the way a spring wind smells after a long winter. The chipmunk stood up on her shoulder and chirped, the first sound it had made in a day. The passage opened. Sterling stopped in the doorway. A cavern spread out before them, wide as a village square, ceiling lost in light. In the center stood a tree. Streams of color ran up its branches and poured into the air above it, pink and blue and gold, moving like water flowing the wrong way. At its roots grew grass so fine and green it looked painted. Linny let go of his hand and walked into the light.

Sterling walked the cavern wall while Linny stood in the light. He looked for a seam, a draft, another passage. The stone was smooth under his hand. No door. No crack. He counted their supplies in his head: half a loaf, a strip of jerky, one flask. Two days, if they ate light. Less if they moved. He circled back to the tree. Its streams of color poured up and vanished into the ceiling glow. He could not tell if the ceiling was rock or sky. "There's no way out," he said. "Not that I can see." Linny had taken a scrap of board from her coat and a small tin of paint. She sat on the grass near the roots. She looked up at him. "Sit down." "Linny. We need to find a door." "Sit down, Forge." She reached up and took his wrist. She pulled him down beside her. The grass gave under him like new wool. He had never felt anything so soft. It pressed up around his palm and stayed warm. "We're safe here," she said. "Feel it." He wanted to argue. He thought of the bread and the flask and the sealed doors behind them. But her hand stayed on his wrist, and the air smelled sweet, and the chipmunk had curled into a ball in the grass and gone to sleep with its pink tail over its nose. "Watch," she said. She opened the tin. She dipped her brush and set it against the board. He watched her work. She mixed a blue he had not seen before. She laid it down in a curve. Then a pink over it, thin, so the blue showed through. She painted the streams above them without looking up at the tree once. She already knew them. Sterling leaned closer. He kissed her shoulder through the painted coat. "I'm sorry," he said. "For all of it. I should have believed you." She did not stop painting. "Anyone with your hands was going to paint something bigger than the square," he said. "I knew that. I said the other thing anyway." She dipped the brush again. Her mouth moved a little at the corner. "I told you," she said. "You told me." "It really is beautiful." "It is." He watched her lay down a stroke of gold. The color on the board caught the light from the tree and held it, the way silver holds a flame. He had been in this cavern an hour and had already stopped hearing the wind he had walked in through. He stopped looking for the door. When he checked the flask later, it was still half full. When he checked again, it was still half full. He set it down in the grass and did not check a third time.

Sterling knelt at the base of the tree. He wanted to understand the light before he tried to use it. Linny painted behind him. He watched a ribbon of blue climb the bark, then split into pink and gold. He put a finger near it. The light did not burn. It did not feel like anything. He pulled his hand back anyway. If he broke this, he broke the only fire in the world that might teach his forge. "Are you going to touch it?" He turned. A small girl stood behind him in a green dress. No shoes. Brown hair to her waist. She looked about seven. She was not there a moment ago. Sterling stood up slow. His hand went to his knife and stopped. She did not look like a thing to stab. "Who are you?" "Sage." She smiled at him like she knew him. "This is the place of dreams. You have one too. Don't you?" Linny had lowered the brush. She watched but did not move. "A sword," Sterling said. It came out before he could weigh it. "I want to forge a sword. My fire won't hold the heat." Sage walked past him to the tree. She reached up and pinched a thread of gold light between two fingers, the way a person pinches a needle. She pulled. The thread came away with her, still glowing, thin as hair. She knelt and laid it on the grass. The grass under it began to burn without smoke. A small clean flame stood up from the ground. Sterling stared. The flame did not spread. It sat there, steady, hot on his face. "You can do it too," she said. "I don't have tools." "Don't you?" She stood and walked around the trunk. Sterling followed. Linny came behind him with the chipmunk on her shoulder. On the far side of the tree, laid out on the grass, was an anvil. A hammer. Tongs. A bellows. Bar stock of good steel, stacked. A quench trough already full. His own leather apron, folded, with the burn mark he knew. He stopped walking. "How." "I told you," Sage said. "The place of dreams." Sterling knelt by the anvil. He touched it. Cold iron under his palm. Real. He picked up the hammer. His hammer. The nick in the handle where he had dropped it two winters ago. He looked at the tree. He reached up the way she had. He pinched. The light gave. A blue thread came away in his fingers, warm, alive. He laid it in a small ring on the grass. It caught. The flame stood clean and even, no cold side, no hot side. He looked at Linny. She was already smiling. "Make it," she said. Sterling pulled on the apron. He fed the fire a second thread, then a third. The heat held even down the whole ring. He picked up a bar of steel.

Sterling laid the steel bar across the ring of blue fire. The heat rose clean up the whole length. No cold end. No hot spot. He watched the color climb the bar the way it was supposed to, orange to yellow to a pale straw. His hands knew this part. His hands had never had a fire that would let them do it right. He pulled the bar and set it on the anvil. He struck. The metal moved like it wanted to. He struck again. The scale flaked off clean. "That sound is different," Linny said behind him. She had set her brush down. "It's the heat," he said. He did not look up. "It's holding." Sage sat cross-legged in the grass on the far side of the anvil. The chipmunk had crept down Linny's arm and was watching from her wrist. Sage watched Sterling's hands, not the steel. "Feed it before it thins," Sage said. He glanced at the ring. The blue threads had gone paler. He pinched another from the tree without looking and dropped it in. The flame stood up again. He worked the bar back into the fire. Drew it out. Struck. The blade began to show under the hammer, longer than any he had finished, straight down its spine. Then the flame guttered. One thread had burned through faster than the others. The ring pulled uneven. He felt the heat tilt in the steel before he saw it. The tip cooled two shades faster than the middle. If he quenched it now the blade would crack the way every other had cracked. He reached for another thread. His fingers closed too hard. The light broke in his hand and went out. "Slow," Sage said. She did not move. Sterling's jaw locked. He held his hand still over the ring. He pinched again, softer this time, the way she had shown him. The thread came away whole. He laid it beside the one that had burned. Then he pulled a third, and set it opposite. He balanced the ring the way he would have balanced coals, if his coals had ever obeyed him. The fire evened. The bar's color evened with it. He drew it out and struck along the spine. The steel sang once, clean, all the way down. He quenched. The trough hissed. He waited for the crack he knew. It did not come. He lifted the blade. Dark, straight, whole. He ran his thumb along the edge. No grain. No chip waiting to open. Linny came up beside him. She did not speak. She put her hand on his wrist. Sage was already standing. Her face had changed. The warmth was still there, but something under it had gone quiet. "You made it," she said. "Now you owe the tree." Sterling looked at the trunk. A pale patch showed where he had pulled the light. It was not filling back in.

Sterling set the blade on the grass. The steel was still warm. He looked up at the pale patch on the tree where the light would not fill back in. "What does it want?" he said. Sage did not answer right away. She walked to the trunk and put one bare foot against a root. The chipmunk on Linny's wrist went very still. "A dream for a dream," Sage said. "That is the trade. One of you carries something out. One of you leaves something behind." Linny's hand slid off his wrist. "The sword," she said. "No." Sterling did not look at her. He looked at Sage. "There has to be another price. Coin. Labor. Blood." "There isn't." Sage's voice was kind and it did not move. "The tree does not take metal. It takes what you came for." Sterling's throat worked. He picked up the blade. It sat in his palm the way he had wanted a blade to sit for ten years. "Then I'll leave it," he said. "Forge." Linny stepped in front of him. Her eyes were wet already. "No." "You crossed a river for this place. You froze for it. I came to help you get here." She turned from him and walked to where her open pack lay in the soft grass. She knelt. She lifted out the small board she had been painting on since they entered the cavern. The tree was on it, half finished, the colored streams caught mid-rise. She held it against her chest for a long moment. Her shoulders shook once. "Linny," he said. "Don't." She set the painting down on the grass, face up, and stepped back from it. She did not look at it again. "Keep the sword. You worked for it. You almost died for it." "So did you." "For something else." She wiped her face with the back of her hand. "I've been chasing this since I was twelve. I'm allowed to put it down." Sage watched the painting. She did not touch it. She did not need to. A seam of light opened in the cavern wall behind the tree. Not a door they had missed. A door that had not been there. Cold air pushed through it and stirred the grass flat. Linny shouldered her pack. She kissed Sterling once, quick, on the corner of the mouth. "Bring it home," she said. "Use it for something." She walked through the seam without looking back. Sterling stood alone in the grass. The chipmunk had gone with her. The tree's light kept climbing, indifferent. He looked down at the blade in his hand. It was still warm.

Sterling stepped through the seam with the blade in his hand. Cold hit him first. Then the sound of Linny crying. She stood in the small clearing where the stone door had brought them out. Snow to her knees. Her pack at her feet. The chipmunk on her shoulder pressed flat against her neck. She wiped her face when she saw him and tried to make it not a sob. "You came out fast," she said. Then her eyes went to his empty hip, to his hands, to the wrapped shape he carried. Her face changed. "Where's the sword?" He held out what he carried. Not steel. A flat board wrapped in his shirt. She took it before she understood. She pulled the shirt back and saw her own half-finished painting, the tree, the streams of light caught mid-rise. "No," she said. "I traded." "No. Forge. No." She shoved the painting back at his chest. "Go back. Take it back. Give her the painting and take the sword." "The door's gone." She turned in the snow. The hillside behind them was smooth. No seam. No stone. Only a faint warm square in the rock where light still bled through the surface, dim as a banked coal. "Then knock," she said. "Beg. That was ten years. That was your dream." "It wasn't." She stopped. "The sword wasn't the biggest one," he said. "You were. I just didn't have the nerve to say it before you left the first time." She looked at him a long moment. Then she stepped through the snow and kissed him. Not the quick one from the cavern. This one held. Her hat fell back. Her hand was in his hair. He dropped the painting into the snow because he had to hold her with both arms. Something moved in the trees behind them. They broke apart. The chipmunk had gone rigid on her shoulder, ears flat. Sterling turned. The frostwood cluster on the slope stood still, but the stillness was wrong. Something paced behind the trunks. Then another shape, opposite side. Circling. The light was going. He had not noticed. The sky above the ridge was already the color of old iron. He took stock without moving his head. One knife. A hammer. Half a water skin. No food that mattered. No coat but the one on his back and the shirt now wet in the snow at his feet. Days of walking between them and any hearth they knew. And the door behind them cooling by the minute. "Forge," Linny whispered. She had the ruined blade out. Her hand was steady. He bent, picked the painting from the snow, and pushed it inside his coat against his chest. He drew the knife. "Back to the stone," he said. "Keep it at our spine." They moved together. The circling narrowed. Whatever it was, it was not waiting for full dark.

Sterling put his back to the warm square in the stone and Linny put hers beside his. The knife felt small in his hand. The damaged blade in hers was worse. He knew where the chip was. He knew the grain along the break. One clean stroke, maybe. Not two. The first shape broke from the frostwood at a run. Long body, low head, teeth set in a jaw too wide for its face. Sterling stepped in front of Linny before he thought about it. He met the thing with the knife and felt it slide across bone. It knocked him sideways into the snow. He came up swinging the hammer with his off hand and caught it above the eye. It fell and did not get up. The second one came from her side. Linny cut. He heard the blade break. He heard her cry out. He turned and saw her down in the snow with the ruined blade snapped at the hilt and the creature on top of her, its claws through her coat and into her side. He did not remember crossing the ground. He drove the knife into the base of its skull and kept driving until it stopped moving. Then he dragged it off her. Blood came through her coat fast. Too fast. The chipmunk was under her hat, shaking. A third shape paced at the tree line, deciding. "Get up," he said. "Can't." He scooped her against his chest and ran, not toward the door, which was cold now, but along the slope, downhill, where the frostwood thinned. The third one followed but did not close. It had seen the other two. He ran until his legs failed. He went down on his knees in a low pocket between two rises. The snow there was gone. Under it, grass. Soft, fine, warm to the touch. It should not have been there. He did not stop to ask. He laid her down on it. Her coat was black where it should have been dry. He pressed his palm over the deepest cut and leaned his weight in. She made a sound he would carry the rest of his life. "Stay," he said. "Stay with me." "Painting," she said. He pulled the board from inside his coat and pushed it under her hand. Her fingers closed on the edge. The third creature stepped into the pocket. Sterling stood up over her. He had the hammer. Nothing else. He set his feet. It lunged. He swung. The hammer took its jaw. Its claws took his thigh, then his forearm, then the side of his ribs before he brought the hammer down again on its skull and heard it crack. He fell beside her on the warm grass. His blood ran into hers. The pocket held them both. Above the ridge, the sky went black.

Sterling opened his eyes to a sky gone purple at the edges. Linny had not moved. Her hand was still on the edge of the painting board. His own hand was still pressed against her side, and his palm was stuck to her coat where the blood had cooled. He counted her breaths. He got to four before he lost track. He needed cloth. He needed heat. He had neither, and the pocket of warm grass would not keep them past dawn. He sat up. Pain went through his ribs like a blade turning. His forearm hung wrong. He looked at his own thigh and saw the coat torn open and the wound under it still working. He was bleeding into the grass. If he went down, she went with him. He took the knife and cut the lining out of his coat. The cloth was thin and dirty. It would have to do. He pressed a strip against her side and used his teeth and his good hand to tie it around her. She made no sound, which was worse than the sound she had made before. His own wounds needed more than cloth. He looked at the grass under his knees. It was warm. It should not have been warm. He tore up a handful by the roots and crushed it between his palms. A pale sap came out, thick, faintly green. He smelled it. It smelled like nothing he knew. He pressed it into the cut on his thigh anyway. The bleeding slowed. He did his ribs next, then his arm. It slowed there too. The chipmunk crawled out from under Linny's hat. Its snow-dusted fur was matted with her blood. It stood on her chest and looked at him with round wet eyes. Then it climbed down and ran a short way toward the frostwood cluster at the edge of the pocket. It stopped. Looked back. Ran a little farther. "I can't carry her," he said. His voice came out cracked. "Not yet." The chipmunk came back. It climbed onto Linny's shoulder and pressed itself against her neck. Her breath caught, then evened. He did not understand it. He did not need to. He packed the rest of the crushed grass into a wad and pushed it under her bandage. He lay down beside her on his good side and put his arm across her so he would feel it if she stopped breathing. He set the hammer within reach. The knife too. "Stay," he said again. "Stayed," she said. Barely. He did not sleep. He watched the tree line until the sky above the ridge began to gray. Nothing came out of the frostwood. The chipmunk did not move from her neck. His blood had stopped. Hers had stopped. They were alive when the light came. Both of them. He had bought a day.

The sun climbed but did not warm anything past the edge of the grass. Sterling watched the frost line creep back toward them across the dirt. The pocket had shrunk in the night. He could see it now in daylight — a thin patch of green ringed by white, no bigger than a horse blanket. By afternoon the cold would have it. By dark it would have them. He tried to sit Linny up. Her head rolled against his good arm. Her lips had gone the color of ash. The chipmunk stayed clamped to her neck, its small body rising and falling with her breath. He put his hand on her cheek. Cold. Colder than the grass under her. "Linny." He shook her shoulder. "We can't stay. I need you to walk with me. A little." Her eyes opened halfway. She did not see him. "We won't make sunrise," he said. "Not this one. Not the next. Do you hear me?" Her mouth moved. He bent close. "Polona," she whispered. Then again. "Polona. Polona." He did not know the name. He knew her sister had spoken it once in his shop, low, like a debt. He waited. He did not know for what. The air behind him changed. Not warmer. Quieter. He turned. A cottage stood at the edge of the frostwood where no cottage had been. Snow sat thick on its roof. Runes and small bundles hung from its eaves. A round window glowed yellow. The door was already open. A woman stood in it. Silver hair, bright eyes. She looked eighteen and eighty at once. She did not step out into the snow. "Bring her," she said. Sterling got his good arm under Linny's knees and the bad one under her shoulders. His ribs tore. He walked anyway. The chipmunk rode her collar. At the threshold the woman moved aside. Warmth hit him like a wall. She closed the door behind them and pointed to a low bed by the hearth. He laid Linny down. His knees went with her. He caught himself on the bed frame. The woman knelt by Linny and put two fingers on her throat. She lifted the bandage. She did not flinch at what was under it. "She will live," she said. "If I work now." "Do it," Sterling said. The woman looked at him. Her eyes held longer than eyes should. "You know how I work." "I've heard." "A price. Named later. Not refused." He thought of the sword he had given up for a painting. He thought of Linny's breath under his hand in the grass. He thought of what a man like him had left to spend. "Take it," he said. She nodded once and reached for Linny's wound. “I should start charging more. Given how many time she’s been here.” Outside, the pocket of warm grass finished dying in the cold. Inside, Sterling sat down on the floor and understood he had just paid something he had not counted.

The witch worked without speaking. Sterling watched from the floor. She unwrapped Linny's shoulder, laid her palm on the wound, and hummed one low note. The bleeding stopped. She pulled a jar from a shelf and smeared something dark into the tear. Linny's breath deepened. Color came back to her mouth. Sterling waited for the price. She did not name it. She wiped her hands on a cloth and hung the cloth by the fire. "What do you want," he said. "Not yet." "Tell me now. I'll pay it now." She turned. Her eyes caught the firelight and held it too long. "That is not how it works." "I have a forge. I have tools. I can bring silver. Steel." "I have shelves of silver." "Then name it." She knelt by the hearth and fed it a small stick. "A favor. Later. When I ask." "What favor." "I do not know yet." He stood. His ribs pulled. He sat again. "I need to know." "You needed her to live. She lives." On the bed, Linny stirred. Her hand searched the blanket. Sterling reached and took it. Her fingers closed on his. Warm. Alive. He looked back at the witch. "And if I say no when you come." "You will not say no." "You don't know that." "I know what she is worth to you. I watched you carry her." She pointed at Linny without looking. "You will pay." He thought of the sword he had forged in the cavern. He thought of the painting he had traded it for. He thought of the flawed second blade broken in the snow. He had already spent everything he thought he owned. There was nothing left to bargain with but himself. "Same terms as the woodcutter," he said. He had heard Lena speak the woodcutter's name in his shop, low, the way Linny had spoken this one. He guessed. The witch's mouth moved. Something like a smile. "He asked the same question. I gave him the same answer." "Then I take it." "You already did. At the door." He looked down at his hand in Linny's. It was done. He had signed it when he crossed the threshold with her in his arms. The naming was only ceremony. "Sleep," the witch said. "Both of you. The cottage will hold until morning. After that, it goes where it goes." She lifted a kettle from the fire and poured two cups. She set one by the bed and one by his hand. Then she sat in a chair by the window and looked out at nothing. Sterling drank. His shoulder loosened. Linny's grip stayed tight in his. He had bought her life with a debt he could not measure. He would owe it until she called for it. He did not know when that would be. He only knew he had crossed a line he could not walk back, and Linny was breathing beside him, and for tonight that was enough.

Sterling woke to a hand on his shoulder. The witch stood over him. The fire was out. Gray light came through the small round window. "Up," she said. "Both of you." Linny sat up on the bed. Her color was good. She swung her legs down and reached for her coat like she had not almost died. She looked at the witch and did not seem surprised to see her. "Polona," Linny said. "Get your boots." Sterling stood. His shoulder held. He gathered his hammer, his knife, the good blade. His pack was already by the door. He did not remember setting it there. The witch opened the door. He had expected the frostwood and the cold pocket of grass. He got a stone path. Pine and snow. A long slope falling away below them. He knew the shape of it. The ridge road home. "That's not where we came in," he said. "No." He stepped out. The village lay down the slope, small and gray in the morning. Two days walk, maybe less. He turned back. The cottage sat crooked against the hill, painted shutters and hanging bundles, runes cut into the beams. It had not been here a minute ago and would not be here in an hour. He understood that without being told. Linny stepped past him onto the path. She did not argue. She had already accepted the trade Sterling could not see. "Why the road home," he said. "Why not drop us where you found us." Polona looked at Linny. Her face did not move much. "Call it a favor. For a friend." "I'm not your friend." "Not you." She kept looking at Linny. "She reminds me of someone. Myself. A long time ago. Chasing a thing my hand kept closing on air." Linny met her look and held it. Something passed between them Sterling did not catch. "The debt still stands," Polona said to him. "The road is not the debt. The road is because I wanted to." "When do you come for it." "When I come." She stepped back inside and shut the door. The latch clicked. Sterling put his hand on the wood. It felt like wood. He took his hand away and it felt like nothing. The cottage was already less there than it had been. He turned to Linny. She was looking down the slope at the village. "Home," he said. "For now." She started walking. He followed. The blade at his hip. The debt on his back. The ridge road unspooling toward the roofs he knew, and the door in the hill somewhere behind them, unopened, waiting.

They came down the ridge road at midday. The village looked the same. Smoke from the bakery. Two women hauling water. A dog nosing at a doorway. Sterling kept the good blade under his coat. Linny walked beside him with her arm tucked close where the witch had closed the wound. "Slow," she said. "Like we've been nowhere." They were forty paces from the square when Hild stepped out from the shadow of the mill. Two men behind him. His coat was clean. His spectacles caught the light. "Sterling Forge," Hild said. "Miss Marsh." Sterling stopped. His hand did not go to the blade. He made it stay. "Governor." "The curfew stands. It stood when you left. You crossed the ridge against a standing order." Hild's voice was easy, almost kind. "That's an arrest. Both of you. Today." Linny laughed. It came out light and quick, like the laugh she used on customers who did not buy. "The ridge," she said. "We went up to the woodcutter's cabin. Camping. Two nights. Sterling made a fire that smoked half the trees out." Hild's mouth thinned. "Camping." "Camping." She held up her arm. The witch's stitching showed white through the tear in her sleeve. "Fell out of a tree. Sterling wrapped it. He's better with a hammer." "You were seen leaving before dawn. With packs." "For two nights," Sterling said. "Ash in the jars for the fire." Hild looked at him a long moment. He knew. Sterling saw him know. But knowing was not proof, and Hild's men were watching Hild's face for the next word. The baker came out of her shop then, wiping flour on her apron. A short woman with red hands. Her son was the boy Lena had pulled from under a beam during the square attack. She had not spoken to Sterling since. She looked at Linny's sleeve, then at Hild. "They stopped at my door yesterday morning," she said. "For bread. On their way back down." Hild turned to her. "Yesterday morning." "Two loaves. She paid in coin. He carried them." The baker did not blink. "I'd know. I was up before the oven." One of Hild's men shifted his weight. The other looked at the ground. A lie from a woman whose son was alive because of Lena Marsh was not a lie anyone in the square would call. Hild's smile came back thin. "Then I've been misinformed." He stepped closer to Sterling. Close enough that Sterling smelled the oil in his hair. "Be more careful where you camp, smith. The woods take people." "I know they do." Hild walked past them toward the square. His men followed. The baker went back inside without a word. The door shut. Linny let out her breath. "Home," she said. "For now." They walked. The blade under his coat. The debt on his back. The door in the hill still waiting behind them, and Hild's eyes on the street ahead.

They were home a week before Sterling lit the forge again. Linny came with him each morning. She sat on the stool by the water barrel and painted small things on scraps of tin while he worked. He tried the sword every day. Every day it cracked at the quench, or the edge ran wavy, or the spine warped where the heat had run thin. "Again," she said each time. She did not say it kindly. She said it like a fact. He rebuilt the hearth on the fourth day. He tore out the old brick and laid new ones tighter, packed clay in the seams, cut a second vent low on the side. He watched the coals from morning until the light went yellow at the window. The heat still crawled. One end of the bar glowed orange while the other stayed dull red. "It's the draw," he said. "Air comes in cold from the door. It pulls the fire long instead of even." Linny looked up from her tin. "Close the door." "I'll cook." "Then crack the roof." He stared at her. Then he climbed up and pried loose two shingles above the chimney. Cold air fell straight down onto the coals. The fire steadied. The bar glowed one color end to end. He worked through the afternoon without speaking. He drew the steel out slow. He folded it, welded it, drew it again. The hammer sang the same note on every strike, which meant the metal was the same all through. When he brought it to the quench he did not close his eyes. The oil hissed once, clean, and settled. He pulled the blade up. It was straight. He sighted down the spine. Straight. He set it on the stone and tapped it with a file. The file skipped where it should skip and bit where it should bit. "Linny." She was already off the stool. She came around the anvil and looked at the blade in his hands. "You did it," she said. He laughed. It came out rough, more breath than sound. She laughed with him and the laugh caught between them and grew, and then they were both laughing hard enough that he had to set the sword down before he dropped it. She took his face in both hands. Her fingers were cold and had dried paint on them. She kissed him. He held her against him with the forge still ticking behind them. Ten years of failed steel. The girl he had lost and gotten back. Both in one afternoon, in the same room. "I love you," he said. "I know." He looked past her at the blade cooling on the stone. It was the best thing he had ever made. And somewhere on a shelf in a cottage that was not there anymore, a witch was keeping the count of what he owed.