The rot had eaten a hole in Tammi Ward's front wall the size of a barrel, and the sun was already dropping behind the Dead Wood's black trees. She pressed her palm to the ruined boards, and they crumbled like wet bread. Beyond the gap, the forest waited. Every night the horrors from those trees crept closer to her homestead, and every night the wards her mother had carved held them out. But wards need a wall. She had until dark to seal the hole, or she would sleep on the wrong side of nothing. Tammi hauled her tools to the gap. She had planks, but they were soft with the same rot. She had nails, but nothing sound to drive them into. Her hands shook as she stacked what wood she trusted against the hole. It reached her knee. No higher. The pile would stop nothing. A small dragon no bigger than a cat scrambled up the woodpile behind her. Its scales glowed gold in the fading light, and its stubby wings buzzed. She had raised it from an egg found in the ashes of a burned tree. It nosed her cheek and chirped, wanting supper. "Not now," she said. "We're both in trouble if this stays open." Then she saw the thing growing at the wood's edge. A carnivorous flower stood tall as her waist, its petals split into a fanged mouth. It had rooted where the rot spread, feeding on the decay. Its stem was thick and hard as oak. Tammi grabbed her mother's rustic bow, the one carved with a little painted hen, and used its curved tip to test the plant. The stem did not bend. It was strong. She made her choice. Tammi hacked the flower down at the base, and its jaws snapped shut on empty air. She dragged the thick, thorned stalk to the gap and wedged it crosswise. Then she cut more. She lashed the woody stems together with cord and forced them into the hole, thorns out. The little dragon watched, then breathed a thin ribbon of fire. The flame did not burn the green wood. It hardened it, blackened it into something like iron. "That," Tammi whispered. "Do that again." The dragon crawled along the barrier and breathed on each stem. Tammi packed the gaps with the hardened stalks while the fire cured them stiff. By the time the last light died, the hole was sealed with a wall of fire-baked thorns, tight and unbroken. She stepped back, breathing hard. The wards on the doorframe glowed faint blue again. They had a wall to hold. Something moved in the trees, low and heavy, testing the new barrier. It scraped once against the thorns and pulled away. Tammi's hands were bleeding from the plant's teeth. The seal would hold tonight. But the rot was still in the rest of her walls, and now she knew the forest had smelled the weakness. It would come back for the next soft board.

Morning showed Tammi the truth. The thorn seal held, but the rot had crept sideways. She pressed the boards along the side wall, and three sank under her thumb like rotten fruit. Soft. All soft. She dug out the worst with her knife until she had holes she could push her arm through. The little dragon perched on her shoulder and chirped, watching the pieces fall. "I have to cut it out," she told it. "Before the forest tries these tonight." She cut all morning. By noon three gaps yawned in the side wall, each the width of her body. Now she needed sound wood to fill them, and she had none. Her whole store was rotten through. She stacked the last dry planks and found them spongy at the core. The dragon breathed on one, hopeful. The rot only hissed and blackened, still soft. Fire cured green wood, not dead wood. She needed something living and strong. Tammi remembered the thorn stalks. The carnivorous flowers had grown where the rot spread, feeding on decay. If rot drew them, more would be waiting. She took her mother's hen-painted bow and went along the base of the walls. She found them there, six fat stalks rooted in the damp, mouths snapping at flies. She hacked each one down, wary of the teeth, and dragged the load back with her hands stinging. The cutting took the rest of the light. She wedged the green stalks into the first gap, thorns out, and packed them tight. The dragon crawled across and breathed. Flame licked the stems. They stiffened, blackened, went hard as iron under her palm. She moved to the second gap, then the third. The dragon's fire came slower now, thinner. Its wings drooped. "Almost," she said. "One more." It gave the last gap a weak ribbon of flame and slumped against her neck, spent. The third seal cured just as the sun dropped. Tammi stepped back and pressed each patch. All three held firm, cold and unbreakable. The wards on the doorframe brightened to blue. She had a whole wall again. Then she looked at her patchwork and understood the new problem. The seals held, but nothing marked them as warded. The barrier was raw iron-thorn, not the carved wood her mother had blessed. She dug through her mother's chest for something to hang, and her fingers closed on a cold curve of metal. An old iron horseshoe, worn smooth at the edges. Her mother had always kept iron at a threshold to turn the horrors back. Tammi hung the horseshoe over the middle patch, open end up. It was one charm for three bare gaps. In the trees something heavy shifted and began to circle the side wall, sniffing along the fresh seams. The old wood had been blessed. This new wall had not. She had bought tonight, but the forest was already learning the shape of her repairs.