Every night, Tres Morass counted the drips. Blue light leaked from the crack in his bottle, one bead at a time, and each bead was a piece of his dead wife's soul. He had trapped her spirit in the glass the night she died. He swore he would put her back into a living body. But the crack was spreading. Soon the bottle would be empty, and there would be nothing left to save. He knelt on the packed-mud floor of his buried hut. The bottle sat before him, glowing weak and pale. A blue drop swelled at the crack and fell. It struck the dirt and vanished. Tres pressed his thumb over the split. The glass was cold and slick, and the soul slipped past his skin like smoke. He needed a vessel that could not crack. He had heard the old swamp tales. A container that sealed cracks forever, painted gold with red-and-black circles, sat somewhere deep in the moss. Fools who sought it never came back. Tres had waited too long already. He wrapped the bottle in rags and crawled out into the dark. The swamp breathed around him. He passed a small tree crowned with golden mushroom caps and pushed through hanging moss. At the water's edge stood the thing that guarded the tales. Its body was long and pink and scaled like a dragon's. Great butterfly wings spread from its back, veined with gold. The guardian lowered its horned head and watched him. "Please," Tres whispered. He held out the leaking bottle. "She is almost gone." The guardian did not strike. It stepped aside. Behind it, half buried in mud, sat the golden vessel. Painted eyes stared up from its round face. A cord was tied at its lip. Tres understood then. The guardian did not stop the desperate. It only stopped the greedy, and it could see which he was. He crawled to the vessel and lifted the lid. His hands shook. The bottle's crack had opened wider on the walk, and the blue light guttered like a dying flame. He had one chance. If he spilled her, she was lost. Tres tipped the bottle over the golden mouth. The soul poured out in a thin blue thread. It swirled down into the vessel and settled, glowing brighter now, safe behind walls that would never split. He sealed the lid. The painted eyes seemed to warm. He held the vessel to his chest and wept. She was whole again, every drop of her. But as the guardian folded its wings and turned away, Tres felt the new weight of his promise. A soul, saved. And still no living body to pour her into. He had won her back from the crack only to face the harder truth: he did not know how to make her breathe again.

The golden vessel rode against Tres Morass's chest as he walked home. His wife was safe inside, whole and glowing. But safe was not alive. A soul needed a living body, and he did not know what body could hold hers without breaking her all over again. Guess wrong, and he might lose her forever. He knelt in the mud outside his hut and pressed his forehead to the painted lid, begging for an answer. A voice answered instead. "You'll ruin that dress kneeling in the muck." Tres spun. A young woman stood at the edge of his clearing, out of place as a jewel in a ditch. Her gown was pink and clean. A crown sat crooked on her tangled blonde hair. Mud caked the hem she lifted with two fingers. He clutched the vessel and hissed, backing toward his door. "Don't skitter off," she said. "I'm lost, and I'm hungry, and I've been walking this swamp for two days. I'm Scarlett Fontaine. My carriage sank." She looked at the golden vessel in his arms. "What is that? It's glowing." "Mine," Tres said. "Stay back." But he could not stop staring at her. She was young. She breathed. Her heart beat under that ridiculous pink dress. A living body, whole and healthy, standing right in front of him. His hands shook on the lid. He thought of his wife's soul, so bright behind the gold. He thought of pouring her into this stranger. He took one step toward Scarlett. She saw his face change and stepped back. "Why are you looking at me like that?" Tres stopped. His stomach turned. He looked at his own filthy hands, at the girl's frightened blue eyes. He had crossed the swamp on love, not greed. The guardian had let him pass because he wanted to save his wife, not steal from another. If he emptied this girl to fill his wife, he would be the very thing the guardian turned away. He would be a murderer. And his wife would wake in a stolen body, over a corpse. "No," he whispered. He backed off and sank down in the mud. "No. Not you. Not anyone living." He understood it now, cold and clear. A soul could not simply take a body that already held one. He could not steal a life to give one back. Whatever vessel held his wife again, it could not be a person he emptied to make room. "You need food," he said hoarsely. "There is a tree with mushroom caps near the water. Follow the moss. It leads out." Scarlett studied him, then nodded slowly. "Thank you." She picked her way past him and vanished into the green. Tres held the vessel and stared at the empty trees. He had his answer, and it was a wall. No living body would do. He needed a body that belonged to no one. He needed to build one, or find one already dead and empty. And he had no idea how.

Three days passed before Tres tried to build a body himself. He dug clay from the water's edge and shaped it inside his mud hut. He packed mud onto sticks. He pressed river reeds into hands, a face, a chest. When he set the golden vessel beside the clay and unstoppered the lid, his wife's soul brightened, reached out, and slid off the dead mud like water off stone. The clay stayed clay. He tried straw next, then a scarecrow of bound roots. Each time the soul recoiled. He learned the hard truth. A soul needs living flesh. Mud will not hold it. He sat in the dark and wept. He had crossed the swamp. He had saved her from the crack. And now a wall of mud told him he could go no further. A shape blocked the low doorway. Pink, mud-stained, familiar. Scarlett Fontaine stooped and came inside without asking. She had found her way back. The crooked crown still sat in her tangled hair. "You never told me your wife's name," she said. She looked at the golden vessel, then at the ruined clay man. "I've been thinking about you since I left. I couldn't stop." Tres clutched the vessel to his chest and hissed. "Go. I told you the moss leads out." "I heard you," Scarlett said. "In the trees, three nights ago. You said you wanted a body no one owned." She knelt in front of him. Her voice stayed steady. "I'm giving you mine." Tres shook his head hard. "That kills you. You know that. Your soul goes out, hers comes in. That's murder." "It isn't, if I leave first." She reached into her dress and drew out a small vial of black glass. "My family gave me this the day I ran. Some choose the vial when there's nothing left to run to. There's no throne waiting for me. No home. Two days lost in the mud showed me that." She set the vial in the mud between them. "Drink after I'm gone. Pour her in while the body's still warm. It works. You know it works." Tres stared at her hand, at the black glass, at his wife glowing behind the gold. His whole body leaned toward it. One swallow of poison and the wall came down. His wife would breathe again, tonight, in this warm and living body. He grabbed the vial. He crushed it under his heel in the mud. "No," he said. "I don't save her by burying you. She would hate what I became. And I would look at her every day and see you dead." Scarlett went still. Then her shoulders shook, and she was crying, and she was laughing. "Nobody's ever told me no like that," she whispered. "Get up," Tres said. "You're not dying in my hut." He pulled her to her feet. The clay man lay broken behind them. He still had no body. But he would not make one from her.

The vial lay crushed in the mud, but Scarlett did not leave. Two more days passed. She sat in the corner of the low mud hut and would not stop talking. Tres tried to think about his wife's soul, sealed behind the gold. He could not. Every time he bent his head to work, Scarlett spoke again. "There must be another way," she said. "Let me help you look. I owe you my life. You said so yourself." She had said this a dozen times. The crooked crown hung in her tangled hair. She had scrubbed the pink dress at the water's edge, but the mud stayed. She was a princess with no throne, and she filled his small home like smoke fills a lung. "You owe me nothing," Tres said. "You owe me quiet." He clutched the golden vessel to his chest. The red-and-black circles stared out from its round face. Inside, his wife turned, slow and bright. He could not hear her over Scarlett. He could not think. He stood up. "Come with me," he said. "You want to help. Then help." He led her out into the swamp. He walked until the water rose to his knees. He stopped at a squat tree crowned with clustered golden mushroom caps. Their light glowed soft against the dark water. "These caps grow only in deep swamp," he said. "I need a full basket. Pick every one. Don't come back until it's full." He handed her a woven basket. It was a task with no end. He hoped she would tire and drift away, as noblewomen did. Scarlett looked at the tree. She looked at the basket. Then she looked at him, and her blue eyes went sharp. "You want me gone," she said. "You want to send me into the mud so you can sit alone with a bottle and grieve." Tres said nothing. That was exactly what he wanted. "No," she said. She set the basket down in the water. "I ran from a whole palace of people who wanted me quiet and out of the way. I won't do it for you." She turned and walked back toward the hut, her ruined dress dragging. "But I heard what those mushrooms are for. My old nurse spoke of them. They wake what sleeps. You've been staring at that bottle for a week. Maybe you should stop guarding your wife and start trying to reach her." Tres stood in the water and watched her go. His plan had failed. She would not leave. But her words caught in him like a hook. Wake what sleeps. He looked at the glowing caps above him, then down at the golden vessel against his chest. He had spent every day trying to pour his wife out into a body. He had never once tried to speak to her inside the gold. He reached up and began to pick the mushrooms himself.