Willa Wren poured her last vial of silverroot down the drain and watched three weeks of work swirl away. The cure-all had curdled again. Villagers came to her door every day now, hoping for the one potion that healed any ailment, and every day she turned them away with lesser remedies. She knew the legend was real. She had tasted a drop of it once, long ago, in her grandmother's kitchen. But her grandmother had died before she could write the recipe down. Willa had the ingredients. That was the cruel part. Her stock stood in a mossy heap outside her door, a living mound of roots and mushrooms and flowers, damp and tangled and bursting with power. She knew almost everything that mound could do. She just didn't know the measures, or the order, or the secret step that made the cure-all whole. So she guessed. And every guess cost her another handful of rare ingredients she could not replace. This morning she had nothing left but the mound itself. Willa knelt beside it in the gray light and dug through the stems, searching for a clue she already knew wasn't there. Her braid dragged in the moss. She was tired in a way sleep could not fix. Then something moved deep inside the mound. A small head poked out. Bright blue eyes. Spotted fur. The creature wriggled free and shook itself, and two thin wings opened on its back, shimmering like dragonfly glass. A bobcat cub, no bigger than a loaf of bread. It must have crawled in to sleep among the warm roots. Willa went still, afraid to scare it. The cub sniffed the air. Then it hopped off the mound and trotted down the stone path, the one lined with her little glowing lanterns. It stopped at the third lantern and began to paw at the earth beside it. Willa followed, slow and careful. The cub dug, chirping, and uncovered the corner of a flat stone. She knelt and pried the stone up. Beneath it lay a small tin box, green with age. Her grandmother's box. Willa's hands shook as she opened the lid. Inside, wrapped in waxed cloth, was a single folded page. The ink was faded but the words held. Measures. Order. A note at the bottom in her grandmother's cramped hand: "Brew only at full moon, or it turns to poison." Willa pressed the page to her chest. For the first time in weeks, she laughed out loud. The cub butted its head against her knee, pleased with itself, and she scratched behind its ears. Then she read the note again, and her joy thinned. The next full moon was four nights away. Her ingredients, pulled and torn from the mound all week, would not keep that long. She had the recipe at last. Now she had to keep her stock alive until the moon was right.

By morning the mound had gone soft. Willa knelt beside it and lifted a handful of roots. They crumbled, brown at the tips. The mushrooms had shrunk. The flowers hung limp. Three more days until the full moon, and her ingredients were dying now. She spread the recipe page flat on a stone and read the measures again. Every version her grandmother had tried used one plant more than any other. Wild thyme. The whole list leaned on it. Willa hurried into her shop. Jars lined the shelves, dusty and quiet. She pulled her dried thyme from a high shelf and crushed a leaf between her fingers. It turned to powder. Dead herbs held no power. The recipe needed fresh thyme, cut living, and she had torn through her own garden weeks ago. She needed a new source before the roots outside gave out. The winged cub trotted past her boots and out the door. It chirped at her from the path, wings flicking. Willa followed. The cub led her past her lanterns to a small willow at the edge of the garden, its branches heavy with pale blossoms. She had never planted it. At its base grew a thick patch of wild thyme, green and fresh, clustered leaves bright with dew. The cub pawed the earth beside it and looked back at her. Willa dropped to her knees and cut a sprig. The smell hit her, sharp and clean. This thyme was alive and strong. But cut thyme would wilt as fast as everything else. She needed it fresh at the exact hour of the full moon, three nights off. Picking it now would waste it. So she did not pick it. She dug instead. Willa lifted the whole thyme patch, roots and soil together, and carried it to a shabby wildflower cart parked by her shop. She packed the roots into the cart bed among the blossoms already there. Living plants kept living. She wheeled the cart to the willow's shade, where the soft light fell cool and even. Then she turned to the dying mound. One by one she moved her failing ingredients into the cart too, nestling roots beside the thyme, laying mushrooms in the damp soil. She watered them from the shop pump. By dusk the cart held her whole stock, alive and breathing, shaded by the willow, the thyme still rooted and green at its center. The crumbling had stopped. Willa sat back on her heels. The cub climbed into the cart and curled among the flowers. She had saved the ingredients. Now she only had to guard them until the moon rose full. She counted her supply again, and her stomach dropped. The recipe called for three full handfuls of thyme. The patch in the cart held barely one. She had enough to keep her ingredients alive. She did not have enough thyme to finish the potion.