Wren Burrow had taught three grandchildren to read the sky, and all three had failed her. She sat on the porch of her hilltop cottage, ledger open on her knees, and watched the last one walk down the hill without looking back. The book held forty years of weather signs, all in her own cramped ink. She was seventy-one. The signs meant nothing if no one after her could read them. The eldest had guessed rain when the clouds promised frost. The middle one grew bored and chased the hens instead. The youngest cried when Wren corrected him. Wren closed the ledger and pressed her thumb against the worn cover. Someone had to carry it. She had no more grandchildren left to try. Then a small voice spoke from under the porch steps. "You had it wrong on Tuesday." Wren leaned over the rail. A child crouched below, knees muddy, a jar of beetles in one hand. It was the neighbor's girl, the quiet one who fetched eggs and never spoke. She had been listening to every lesson from the shadows. "Wrong how?" Wren asked. Her voice came out sharper than she meant. The girl pointed east, where a thin gray smear sat above the trees. "You told him rain by nightfall. But the smoke from the chimney fell flat this morning. That means it holds off. Rain comes tomorrow, past noon." Wren went still. She had marked the same thing in her ledger at dawn. She had told no one. The girl had read it alone, from the smoke and the color of that eastern smear. "Come up here," Wren said. The girl climbed the steps and stood at arm's length, watching Wren the way she watched the beetles. Wren opened the ledger to a fresh page. She turned it so the child could see the rows of signs and dates. "Read me this line," Wren said, and pointed. The girl frowned at the cramped ink. She sounded out the words slow. Then she looked up. "High clouds like fish scales. Wind cold by morning." She thought. "That's frost, isn't it?" "That's frost," Wren said. Her chest felt tight. Not one of her own blood could do this. The child at her elbow was not hers at all. She belonged to the family down the hill, and they would want a say. That was a fight for another day. Wren tore a clean page from the back of the ledger. She handed it to the girl with a stub of pencil. "Tomorrow at dawn, you watch that chimney," Wren said. "You write down what the smoke does. Then you bring it to me." The girl held the paper like it might blow away. "And if I'm wrong?" "Then we find out why," Wren said. "That's the whole trade." The girl ran down the hill, jar and paper clutched to her chest. Wren watched her go. She had found her reader. Now she had to keep her.