Summer Sun stood in the meadow and watched the big golden thermometer glow at the center of it. The needle held steady at a warm, perfect number. She had set it there at sunrise, the way she did every morning since she was twelve. That was the year a friend dared her to make a grumpy stranger laugh. She had not stopped cheering people up since. Today she was thinking about one face in particular, a face that had taken three weeks to crack. She still wondered where that person was now. A sunflower turned toward her. Summer Sun patted its head and started down the path to find her best friend. Angela Ant was waiting near the hedge, holding a clear jar of bright green slime. The jar dripped onto her boots. She did not wipe it. "Matilda gave it to me," Angela said. "She said to pour it into your thermometer. She said it would make the summer end." Summer Sun looked at the jar. Then she looked at Angela. Behind Angela, between two thorny bushes, a dark iron cauldron bubbled with the same green slime. Matilda stood beside it with her arms crossed. Her eyes were flat and tired. She did not say hello. "I told her I would do it," Angela said. "I have not done it yet." "Why did you tell her yes?" Summer Sun asked. "She asked. No one else asks me to do things." Angela held the jar out. "You should take it." Summer Sun took the jar. She walked past Angela, past the cauldron, and stopped in front of Matilda. Matilda's mouth was a hard line. Summer Sun had seen that line before, on the person who lasted three weeks. She felt her chest tighten in a familiar, hopeful way. "You look tired," Summer Sun said. "I am tired," Matilda said. "Give me the jar." Summer Sun tipped the jar over and poured the slime onto the dirt between them. It sank in and disappeared. Matilda watched it go without moving. Then Summer Sun set the empty jar by Matilda's feet and walked back to the thermometer. The needle had not moved. The meadow was still warm. Angela followed her. "She will be angry." "She is already angry," Summer Sun said. She looked back. Matilda was still standing by the cauldron, staring at the wet spot in the dirt. "I am going to make her laugh." "How long will that take?" "As long as it takes." Summer Sun smiled at the thermometer, then at Angela. "She is the grumpiest person I have ever met. I am glad I found her." Behind them, Matilda picked up the empty jar, turned it in her hands, and threw it into the cauldron. The slime hissed. She started walking toward the meadow.

Summer Sun watched Matilda march across the field. The witch's boots crushed the grass flat. Behind her, the empty jar sat by the cauldron, and the wet patch of dirt was already drying in the sun. Angela hid behind the thermometer. Summer Sun did not hide. She had spent the morning getting ready for a grumpy visitor, and a grumpy visitor was coming. Near the edge of the meadow stood an old split-rail fence with half its boards missing. Matilda hit it shoulder-first and a rotten post snapped under her weight. She kept walking. On her belt, tied by a cord, a small red creature thrashed and snarled. It had horns and claws and a face like a kettle about to whistle. Every step Matilda took, it shrieked. Summer Sun had never seen one before, but she knew rage when it was leashed to a person's hip. In the middle of the meadow, Summer Sun had set up a tall pole. From the top hung a single bright feather, blue and gold, turning slow in the warm air. She had spent an hour tying it just right so it would brush the face of anyone who stood beneath it. It was her best trick. No one had ever stood under a tickling feather and stayed angry. Not once in fifteen years. Matilda reached the pole. The feather swung down and touched her nose. She did not flinch. She did not blink. She reached up, closed her fist around the feather, and tore it off the string. Then she dropped it in the grass and stepped on it. The little red creature at her belt laughed instead, a sharp ugly sound, and Matilda's mouth stayed flat. "I am not here for a joke," Matilda said. "I am here to tell you something. You poured out my slime. Fine. I have other plans. Stay out of them." She turned and walked back the way she came, past the broken fence, into the trees. Summer Sun knelt and picked up the crushed feather. The barbs were bent. She smoothed them with her thumb anyway. Angela crept out from behind the thermometer. "She didn't laugh." "No," Summer Sun said. She had failed. She had never failed before. She held the bent feather and felt something new and small open up inside her chest, like a window she had not known was there. Then she smiled, because a window was a window. "She didn't laugh today," Summer Sun said. "I will need a bigger plan. And I will need to know what she is planning next." Angela looked toward the trees where Matilda had gone. The leaves still shook where the witch had pushed through.

Matilda found Angela near the forest edge where the shadows pooled thick between the trees. Angela was picking mushrooms and putting them in her pockets. She did not see the witch until Matilda's hand was already on her shoulder. "Hold still," Matilda said. Angela held still. Matilda whispered three words that tasted like rust and smoke. The air around Angela's head shimmered, then went flat. Angela's eyes glazed over, smooth as river stones. Her hands dropped to her sides. Matilda leaned close and spoke directly into her ear. "Go to the thermometer. Turn the needle as high as it will go." Angela turned and walked toward the meadow without answering. Her boots moved in a straight line. She did not look down to avoid the roots. She stepped over them perfectly, as if something else was counting her steps. Summer Sun was replanting the feather pole when she saw Angela coming. Angela's face was blank. Her mouth hung slightly open. She walked past Summer Sun without stopping, without blinking, and put both hands on the golden thermometer. "Angela?" Summer Sun said. Angela did not answer. She gripped the needle and turned it. The needle swung upward. The air in the meadow grew hotter. The sunflowers drooped. The grass began to brown at the edges. Angela kept turning. Summer Sun ran to the thermometer and grabbed the needle with both hands. She pulled it back down. It moved an inch, then stopped. She pulled harder. The metal burned her palms but would not turn. It was locked in place, held by something she could not see. The number kept climbing. The meadow shimmered with heat. "Angela, stop!" Summer Sun shouted. Angela let go of the needle. She blinked. Her eyes cleared slowly, like fog lifting off a pond. She looked at her hands, then at the thermometer, then at Summer Sun. "What am I doing here?" Angela said. Her voice was small. "You were turning the thermometer," Summer Sun said. She was still holding the needle. It was too hot to touch but she did not let go. "You were making it hotter." Angela stepped back. "I don't remember walking here." She looked at the meadow, at the wilting flowers, at the sky that had gone white with heat. "I was in the forest. I was picking mushrooms. Then I was here. I wanted to turn it. I had to turn it." Her hands started to shake. "Summer Sun, I think Matilda put a spell on me." Summer Sun let go of the needle. Her palms were red. The thermometer glowed in the center of the meadow, hotter than it had ever been. The number at the top was still climbing. She looked at Angela, who was crying now, and then she looked toward the forest where Matilda had gone. The witch was not just angry. She was cruel. And she was not finished.

Angela wiped her face with the back of her wrist. The thermometer glowed above them, its needle pinned at the top mark. The grass around the base had turned yellow. A sunflower snapped at its stem and fell. Summer Sun watched a bee drop out of the air and land in the dirt. She picked it up. It was still warm. She set it down in the shade of her own shadow. "I don't know this magic," Summer Sun said. "I can't feel where the lock is. I can't pull it off if I can't feel it." "Then we find someone who can," Angela said. "You told me once about a tinker. The one who fixed the rain bell after it cracked. He works on enchanted things." Summer Sun nodded. Gideon Cogsworth lived past the meadow, in a workshop full of gears and jars. She had never asked him for help before. She had never needed to. She looked at the wilting grass, then at Angela, then ran. Gideon was already at his door when they arrived, goggles pushed up on his head. He said he had felt the heat spike from a mile off. Summer Sun told him everything, fast. The mind-control, the locked needle, the witch. Gideon listened without interrupting. Then he picked up a small brass tool from his workbench and followed them back. At the thermometer, Gideon pressed the tool against the glass and squinted. He walked around it twice. He touched the needle with one finger and pulled his hand back. "It's a binding hex," he said. "Old style. You don't break it. You feed it something it wants more than the needle." He looked at Summer Sun. "Hexes like this eat feeling. Anger, mostly. You got any anger?" Summer Sun shook her head. Gideon frowned. "Then borrow some." He pointed at the forest. "The witch had a red creature on a leash last time you saw her. That thing is made of anger. Bring me a piece of it and I can trade the hex up." Angela went with her. They found the creature tied to a stump near a black iron pot that bubbled with green sludge. Matilda was not there. The creature snarled and lunged. Angela cut a tuft of red fur from its shoulder with a pocket knife while Summer Sun held its leash taut. They ran back before it stopped screaming. Gideon pressed the fur against the base of the needle. The air hummed. The needle shuddered, then swung down, all the way down, past summer and into a cold reading that made frost bloom on the glass. Gideon winced. "Overshot," he said. "The hex pulled hard when it let go. I can't fix that part. That's yours." Summer Sun looked at the frozen sunflowers, then at the sky, which had begun to snow in the middle of July.

Snow fell on the yellowed grass. Summer Sun stood by the thermometer and watched the flakes settle on the frozen sunflowers. The needle sat pinned at the low mark. Angela shivered beside her. Gideon packed up his tools and said he had done what he could. The rest, he said, was between her and the witch. He walked back toward his workshop and left them in the cold. "We need help," Angela said. "My sister. She listens when I don't." Summer Sun nodded. Angela's sister lived two fields over and kept a level head when the colony panicked. They found Tracie Ant tightening the straps on her vest, already headed out to see what had gone wrong with the weather. Angela told her, plain and fast. Tracie listened, then pointed toward the tree line. "Smoke," she said. "That way. She's brewing again." They followed the smoke to a clearing. Matilda stood over her iron pot. The green mixture inside had gone thick and slow in the cold. She stirred it hard and muttered. When she saw them, she stopped. "You," she said. "You ruined my heat. I needed the air burning for this. Now the pot won't take." She pointed the ladle at Summer Sun. "I was going to melt you out of the sky." Summer Sun stepped closer. The snow crunched under her feet. "Your fire's out," she said. "Your potion's cold. And you're standing in the snow in sandals." She looked at Matilda's bare toes, red and curled. Matilda looked down too. A flake landed on her big toe. She flinched. Summer Sun did not smile. She only pointed. "Your toes," she said. Angela let out one short laugh. Tracie covered her mouth. Matilda glared, then looked at her toes again, and something in her face broke. Not a laugh. A snort. Small. Fast. Gone before she could stop it. Matilda clamped her jaw shut. "That wasn't anything," she said. But the snort had happened. Summer Sun heard it. Angela heard it. Tracie heard it. Matilda kicked the pot. The green mixture sloshed and froze in a sheet down the iron side. She grabbed her ladle and stormed off into the trees without her cauldron. The snow kept falling. Summer Sun watched her go. The needle behind them was still stuck at the bottom. The sunflowers were still frozen. She had not fixed the weather. She had not made Matilda laugh, not really. But she had cracked something. A snort was a start. Angela touched her arm. "She'll be angrier now," Angela said. Summer Sun nodded. "I know." She looked at the abandoned pot, the cold green sludge, the witch's footprints leading into the woods. Whatever Matilda came back with next would be worse. And Summer Sun would be ready for it.

Summer Sun watched Matilda's footprints fill with snow. A snort was not enough. The witch would come back with something worse, and Angela and Tracie and half the meadow creatures would pay for it. Summer Sun turned to Angela. "I'm done trying to cheer her up," she said. "We stop her instead." Angela stared. "Stop her how?" Summer Sun pointed at the abandoned iron pot, its green sludge frozen to the rim. "She can't brew without ingredients. And she can't brew without a place to brew." Tracie nodded slow. "Someone who knows old magic could tell us what she needs most." Angela's antennae twitched. "Granny Weatherby. She lives past the frozen brook. She kept the last witch out of these fields for forty years." They found the old woman in a sunlit barn, wrapped in a wool cardigan, her silver hair pinned up. Bees drowsed on the rafters despite the cold. Summer Sun explained the pot, the snow, the spells on Angela. Granny Weatherby listened and did not interrupt. When Summer Sun finished, the old woman set down her cup. "Matilda's big potion needs a raven feather," she said. "A cracked one, from a bird she's hunted three months. Without it, she can't finish. Take that, and her plans stall." "Where is it?" Summer Sun asked. Granny Weatherby smiled. "In her cottage. On a hook by the door. She keeps her rage imp chained beside it." Angela shivered. Tracie pulled her vest tight. Summer Sun thought of the little red creature snarling on its leash, all teeth and hot breath. "We go now," Summer Sun said. "Before she gets back." They crossed the woods in the falling snow. Matilda's cottage sat crooked among brambles, the door ajar. The imp was chained to a post inside, straining and hissing. Summer Sun stepped past it, close to the wall, her back to the wood. The dark feather hung on an iron hook, its edges split with fine cracks. She lifted it down. The imp lunged. The chain snapped taut an inch from her sleeve. Angela grabbed her arm and pulled her out the door. They ran until the cottage was out of sight. Summer Sun tucked the feather into her jacket and led them back to the warm barn. Granny Weatherby took the feather, wrapped it in linen, and dropped it into a jar of honey. "She won't find it here," the old woman said. "And she can't brew the control potion without it. Your creatures stay their own." Angela let out a long breath. Tracie sat down on a hay bale. Summer Sun looked out at the snow still falling on the fields. The thermometer was still stuck. The weather was still wrong. And Matilda would come home to an empty hook and a laughing memory, and she would come for them next. But her big spell was dead. That much was done.

Summer Sun was still by the barn door when she heard the shouting. It came from across the fields, sharp and cracked, cutting through the falling snow. Angela's antennae flattened. Tracie stood up from the hay bale. Summer Sun stepped outside and saw a black shape crossing the white meadow at a run. Matilda. Her cloak dragged snow behind her. Her hat was gone. Even from far off, Summer Sun could see her hands were empty and shaking. Matilda came on fast. She screamed Summer Sun's name across the fields. She swore at the sky, at the snow, at the barn. Bees in the rafters woke and hummed. Angela pressed against Summer Sun's leg. Tracie reached for a pitchfork. Summer Sun did not move. She had made grumpy people laugh since she was twelve. She had never seen a face like the one coming at her now. Matilda's eyes were wet and wild. Her mouth pulled back from her teeth. She was thirty steps out. Twenty. Ten. Granny Weatherby stepped out of the barn. She did not raise her voice. "Matilda. Stop." Matilda stopped. Her boots skidded in the snow. She stood panting five paces from Summer Sun, arms out, fingers hooked. Granny Weatherby walked between them, slow, wool cardigan buttoned to her throat. "You come to my barn like that, you leave in a jar," she said. "You know the rule. Say your piece from where you stand." Matilda's chest heaved. She stared past Granny at Summer Sun. "The feather," she said. Flat. Short. "Give it back." Summer Sun found her voice. "No." Matilda's hands twitched. She looked at Granny. Granny looked back. Matilda took one step backward. Then another. Her mouth worked, but nothing came out. She turned and walked away across the snow, stiff, silent, empty-handed. Angela let out a breath. Tracie set down the pitchfork. Summer Sun watched the black shape shrink across the field toward the twisted bramble cottage in the far trees. Granny Weatherby did not watch. She looked at Summer Sun instead. "She'll try something small next," the old woman said. "She can't do the big spell. But a witch that angry doesn't sit still. She'll pick one of you off, if she can." Summer Sun nodded. She thought of the wild face, the shaking hands, the mouth that could not find words. She had cracked Matilda once by pointing at cold toes. That would not work today. Whatever came next, laughter was not going to be the first tool she reached for. She would need it later. She was sure of that. But not yet.

The snow kept falling. Summer Sun watched Matilda's black shape reach the tree line and vanish into the brambles around her crooked cottage. Granny Weatherby went back inside the barn to stoke the stove. Angela stood beside Summer Sun in the doorway, antennae twitching against the cold. "She'll hurt someone," Angela said. Flat. A fact. Summer Sun nodded. She had spent a lifetime making grumpy people laugh. She had never met rage like this, and she had nothing in her pockets that would touch it. A joke would bounce off. A song would make it worse. She needed to try something else, and she needed to try it now, before Matilda picked her small revenge. Summer Sun pulled her coat tight and stepped into the snow. Angela hurried after her. "Where?" Angela asked. "To her," Summer Sun said. "Empty-handed. No trap. No plan." Angela stopped walking for one step, then caught up. They crossed the white meadow together. Summer Sun's hands shook inside her sleeves. She kept walking. She thought of the person who had lasted three weeks against her. She had cracked him with patience, not with a joke. She hoped patience was still a tool she owned. The brambles around the cottage had grown thicker. Matilda sat on the front step in the snow, cloak muddy, hands open on her knees. She did not stand when they came near. She did not shout. She looked up, and her face was not wild anymore. It was tired. "Come to gloat," she said. "No," Summer Sun said. She sat down in the snow across from her. Angela sat too. Summer Sun did not smile. She did not sing. She said, "I'm sorry you're this angry. I don't know how to fix it. I wanted you to know I'm here anyway." Matilda stared at her. Her mouth twisted. She waited for the trick. The trick did not come. A long minute passed. Matilda's shoulders dropped an inch. Not laughter. Not softness. Just a crack, small and real, in the wall. "Get off my step," Matilda said. Quiet. No venom. Summer Sun stood. Angela stood. They walked back across the meadow. Halfway across, Angela said, "You didn't make her laugh." "No," Summer Sun said. "I didn't try." She had gone to a furious witch with nothing and come back without a scratch. The rage had not broken. But it had bent, once, for a breath, when she stopped performing. She understood now what the finale would ask of her. Not a joke. Not a clever line. Something harder. She walked toward the barn with the snow melting on her cheeks and did not wipe it away.

The snow did not stop. Summer Sun went back to the barn and warmed her hands at the stove while Angela dried her boots. Granny Weatherby said Matilda would sit on that step until the cold drove her inside, and then the cold would find another way in. Summer Sun thought about the tired face on the step. She thought about the smoke she had not seen rising from the crooked chimney. Matilda had let her fire go out. Angela's sister Tracie came in at dusk, shaking snow from her vest. She had walked past the bramble cottage on her way over. "No smoke," Tracie said. "Chimney's black inside. I could see it from the path." Angela set down the boot she was holding. "She'll freeze," Angela said. "She won't ask." Granny Weatherby stirred the pot on the stove and did not turn around. "She won't," Granny said. "She's stubborn as a nail. She'll light it choked and burn her house down before she knocks on a door." Summer Sun pulled her coat back on. Angela stood up too. "Empty-handed again?" Angela asked. "No," Summer Sun said. "With a brush and a bucket." Tracie fetched both from the corner. Granny Weatherby watched them go and said nothing, which was its own kind of permission. They reached the cottage after dark. Smoke was pouring from the chimney now, thick and wrong, spilling out the seams of the roof. Summer Sun could hear coughing inside. She did not knock. She pushed the door open. Matilda was on her knees in front of the stove, waving a rag at the black smoke, eyes streaming. The stovepipe was packed with three seasons of soot. Matilda saw them and opened her mouth to shout. She coughed instead. Summer Sun set down the bucket. "Move," she said. Matilda did not move. Summer Sun waited. Angela opened a window. Tracie opened the other. The smoke thinned. Matilda sat back on her heels and stared at the floor. "Move," Summer Sun said again, softer. Matilda moved. Summer Sun brushed the pipe clear. Angela hauled the soot out in the bucket. Tracie built a small clean fire in the grate. Nobody spoke. When the flames caught properly, orange and steady, Summer Sun straightened up and wiped her face on her sleeve. Matilda was still sitting on the floor. She looked at the fire, not at Summer Sun. "I didn't ask," Matilda said. Flat. "I know," Summer Sun said. She picked up the bucket. Angela and Tracie followed her out. Halfway down the path, Angela said, "She'll be angry we saw." "She'll be warm," Summer Sun said. The snow was still falling, but slower now, and the light in the cottage window stayed lit behind them.

Matilda woke to a clean stovepipe and a warm room. She sat up on the floor where she had fallen asleep. The fire was still burning. Someone had banked it before they left. She stared at the neat pile of split wood by the grate. She had not split that wood. Angela had. Matilda knew the way Angela stacked things, small pieces on the outside, big ones in the middle. She stood up and walked to the door. She opened it and looked at the snow on her step. There were three sets of boot prints going away. She had not said thank you. She had not said anything. She had said, "I didn't ask," and let them walk out into the cold. The anger came, but not at Summer Sun this time. Not at Angela. Not at Tracie. At herself. It sat in her chest like a hot stone and would not move. Matilda shut the door. She went to the chest under the window and opened it. Inside was a knitted scarf she had made two winters ago and never worn. Red and blue and pink, with frayed ends where she had cut the yarn wrong. She had meant it for someone once and then forgotten who. She pulled it out and laid it on the table. Then she took down two more balls of wool and her needles. She sat by the fire and began to knit. She worked all morning. Her fingers were stiff and she dropped stitches and picked them back up. She made a second scarf, shorter, in orange and yellow. She made a third in green. When the light through the window turned pale, she wrapped all three scarves in a piece of brown cloth and tied it with string. She did not write a note. She could not think of the right words, and any wrong words would make it worse. She walked to the barn in the snow. She left the bundle on the step. She knocked once, hard, and turned and walked back down the path before the door could open. She did not look behind her. She heard the door open. She heard Angela's voice, then Tracie's, then Summer Sun's. She heard Summer Sun laugh, short and surprised. Matilda kept walking. Her chest hurt less with every step, but only a little. Back at her cottage, Matilda sat down at the table. The fire was still warm. The stone in her chest had shrunk. It had not gone. She thought about what Angela stacked and how Summer Sun had said "move" softer the second time. She did not know what to do with any of it. She picked up the needles again and started a fourth scarf. This one she meant to keep.

Summer Sun sat on the barn step with the green scarf across her lap. Angela and Tracie had gone inside to hang theirs by the door. The knock had come and gone before Summer Sun could open it. She had seen Matilda's back on the path, walking fast, not looking back. Summer Sun ran her thumb along a dropped stitch and laughed once, short and surprised. Then she stopped laughing and thought. She had made Matilda crack a smile once, in the clearing, over cold toes. That did not count. A laugh pulled out of someone by a joke was not the same as a laugh they chose. Summer Sun had spent weeks trying to trick this witch into brightness. The scarves on the step were the first honest thing between them. She stood up and folded the green scarf over her arm. She walked to the bramble cottage alone. Smoke came from the chimney now, thin and clean. Summer Sun knocked. Matilda opened the door with needles still in her hand and a half-finished scarf hanging from them. She looked at Summer Sun and did not speak. Summer Sun held up the green scarf. "You dropped a stitch here," she said. "I don't know how to fix it." Matilda stared at her. Then she stepped aside. Summer Sun came in and sat at the table by the fire. Matilda took the scarf and set it flat. She picked up a small hook from the shelf and worked the loose loop back into the row. Her fingers were quick. Summer Sun watched them and did not say anything cheerful. She did not fill the quiet. After a while Matilda said, "There. It will hold." Summer Sun said, "Thank you." Matilda did not look up. She kept her hand on the scarf. Then something in her face moved. Her mouth went crooked. A small sound came out of her, dry and rough, like a cough that had forgotten it was a laugh. She put her hand over her mouth. She looked at Summer Sun with wet eyes and shook her head. "I don't know why," she said. Summer Sun did not answer. She only nodded. Matilda sat down across from her and set the needles aside. The fire popped. Summer Sun felt her chest go warm, not from the stove, from somewhere deeper. She had heard Matilda laugh. Not a full one. Not the kind that finished a job. But a real one, chosen, not pulled. Summer Sun smiled and kept the smile small, so she would not scare it off. She thought of the person who had lasted three weeks, years ago, and how that laugh had come out the same way, half a cough, half a surrender. She stayed at the table until the light through the window went orange. Then she picked up the mended scarf and walked home. Matilda watched her go from the door this time.

Summer Sun woke up thinking about the laugh. She lay in bed and tried to name what had caused it. Not a joke. Not the mended stitch, exactly. Matilda had said, "I don't know why," and Summer Sun did not know either. That worried her. She had cheered up hundreds of grumpy people, and she had always known which crack let the light in. With Matilda, she was working blind. If she could not find the source, she could not go back to it. The scarves would sit in a drawer. The witch would sit alone in the brambles. Whatever had opened between them would close again by winter. She walked back to the bramble cottage that afternoon with no plan and no gift. Matilda answered the door in the same apron. Summer Sun said, "Come have tea with me. There's a place in the village. I want to try something." Matilda looked past her at the path. "Why." "Because I want to know if it happens again," Summer Sun said. "The laugh. I don't know what did it. I want to find out." Matilda's mouth pulled flat. She was quiet a long time. Then she took her shawl off the hook and stepped outside. "If people stare, I leave," she said. Summer Sun nodded. They walked to the tea cottage with the lantern-lit windows. Summer Sun ordered two cups and a plate of small cakes. Matilda sat with her back to the room and her hands in her lap. Summer Sun did not perform. She did not tell a story or make a face. She asked Matilda about the moonbloom root and the raven that kept slipping her snares. Matilda answered in short sentences. She said the root had been eaten three nights running. She said the raven was smarter than her. She said this last part flat, like a fact she had accepted. Summer Sun watched her face. Nothing moved. The tea went half cold. Summer Sun felt the afternoon slipping and her chest going tight, and she understood: she could not steer this. She had come to catch the laugh in a jar and there was no jar. She set her cup down and said, "I don't know how to do this with you. I always know. I don't with you." Matilda looked up. Her eyes went wet again, fast, and she made the same rough sound from the day before, half cough, half surrender. She pressed her knuckles to her mouth. "Stop trying to figure it out," she said. "That is what does it." Summer Sun sat very still. She had her answer and she did not like it. Her whole method was the thing in the way. She would have to come back without a plan, again and again, and hope. She walked Matilda home in the dusk and did not say a cheerful word the whole way.

The morning after the tea, Summer Sun did not go straight to the bramble cottage. She waited. Matilda had told her to stop trying. That meant she could not arrive with a question or a gift or a plan. She sat on her step until midmorning, then walked the long way through the field. She told herself she was only checking on the moonbloom patch Matilda had mentioned. That was a small enough reason to knock. She was still in the trees when she heard it. A laugh, loud and rough, coming through the open window of the cottage. Summer Sun stopped on the path. She had never heard Matilda laugh alone. She crept closer and looked in. Matilda stood at the mirror above her washbasin. Her long gray hair was loose down her back. She had just put a hat on her head, and it was not her hat. It was a bent, teal thing covered in pink and yellow polka dots, the brim drooping over one eye. Matilda stared at herself. Then she laughed again, harder, and had to catch the basin to stay upright. Summer Sun stepped back from the window. She could go in. She could knock and say something clever about the hat and try to keep the laugh going. Her hand was already halfway up. She stopped it. That was the old method. That was the thing in the way. Matilda had found a laugh by herself, over a silly hat, with no audience. If Summer Sun walked in now, she would turn it into a show. The laugh would close up. She lowered her hand and stood in the brambles and listened to the witch laugh at her own reflection until the sound died down on its own. She walked home the long way. She had come to learn how to make Matilda laugh, and instead she had learned to leave when a laugh was already there. It felt like losing. She had never in her life walked away from a laugh she could have joined. She thought of the person who had held out for three weeks when she was young, and how she had chased that one down until it broke. She had chased every one since. Now she was going home with her hands empty on purpose. At the edge of the field she stopped and said out loud, "Alright." Then she kept walking. She would go back tomorrow with nothing, and she would knock, and she would see what Matilda chose to show her. That was the work now.

The next morning Summer Sun kept her promise to herself. She walked to the bramble cottage with empty hands and no plan in her head. She did not creep to the window this time. She went around to the front of the house and knocked on the door. When Matilda opened it, the polka-dot hat was still on her head, tilted over one eye. Summer Sun bit the inside of her cheek to hold back a laugh. Matilda looked at her for a long moment. Then she stepped aside and said, "Go ahead." Summer Sun did not know what she meant. She followed Matilda inside. The kettle was already on. Two cups sat on the table, which meant Matilda had heard her coming up the path and set out a second one. Summer Sun sat down. She did not compliment the hat. She did not ask about the moonbloom root or the raven or anything else. She had come with nothing, and she meant to keep it that way. Matilda poured. The steam rose between them. "Go ahead and laugh," Matilda said. "You've been holding it since the door." Summer Sun looked up. Matilda's face was flat, but her eyes were steady on hers. It was permission, not a dare. Summer Sun let the laugh out. It was small at first, then bigger, and by the end she had a hand pressed to her mouth. Matilda did not laugh with her. She watched, and she nodded once, as if a thing had been settled. "I know it's a stupid hat," she said. "I like it." "I like it too," Summer Sun said. She meant it. That was all. They drank the tea. Matilda talked a little about the root that kept getting eaten and the raven she still could not catch. She did not ask for help and Summer Sun did not offer any. When the cups were empty Summer Sun stood up and said goodbye and walked home in the afternoon light. She had not made Matilda laugh today. Matilda had made her laugh instead, and had watched her do it without flinching. Something had turned. Summer Sun did not yet know the shape of it. She only knew that for the first time in a long chase, she was not the one holding the joke.

Summer Sun woke early with a memory tugging at her. Somewhere in the back of her closet was a hat she had bought years ago at a village fair and never worn out of the house. She dug through a box of old scarves and pulled it out. A giant sunflower spread across the brim in bright yellow petals, with a fat brown center that looked like a real seedhead. She held it in front of the mirror and put it on. It swallowed her forehead. She laughed once, alone, and knew where she was going. She walked to the bramble cottage with the hat on her head. The vines around the door were still wet with dew. She knocked. Matilda opened the door in her polka-dot hat, blinked once at the sunflower, and did not speak for a long moment. Summer Sun waited. She had not planned a joke. She had only worn the hat. Then Matilda's mouth twitched. She pressed her lips flat, failed, and let out a short, rough laugh. Summer Sun laughed back. Matilda leaned on the doorframe and laughed again, harder this time, one hand at her ribs. The sunflower brim bounced on Summer Sun's head. The polka dots tilted further over Matilda's eye. Neither of them tried to stop. When they finally quieted, Matilda wiped her cheek with the back of her wrist and said, "We look like fools." "We do," Summer Sun said. "Good," Matilda said. Matilda stepped back and let her in. The kettle was not on this time. Matilda filled it herself while Summer Sun sat at the table with the sunflower still on her head. They did not talk much. Matilda mentioned that the raven had come close to the snare last night and slipped it again. Summer Sun said the sunflowers in the meadow had opened all at once yesterday morning. When the tea was gone, Summer Sun stood up. Matilda walked her to the door and stopped there. "Bring the hat again," she said. It was not a joke and not quite a request. Summer Sun nodded and went home in the bright morning. Something between them had matched. She did not know yet what it would cost, or what Matilda would ask for next.