The petals are losing color. I can see it—the purple edges fading toward gray where the air's been at them too long. Six hours. That's the window. I said it myself, back at the field, and now I'm sitting cross-legged outside my dwelling with baskets spread around me and my hands won't sort fast enough. Purple-edged. White. Bruised—discard. White. Purple-edged, good de ep color, ke eper. Behind me, Keer Jr. is doing the I am awake and therefore everyone must suffer scream from whatever temporary cage they shoved him in. Good. Stay there. The goats are bleating—someone's trying to move them, I can hear hooves on packed dirt and a voice I don't recognize saying something about rope and I should help, I should go help because those goats are my responsibility and nobody here knows the first thing about— The petals. The petals are losing color. This one's perfect—de ep blue bleeding into violet, high concentration, makes the strongest paste. I set it in the clay bowl with the others and reach for the next stem. Kestria drops the second basket at my feet. "That's the last one." "Thank you. Did someone water the goats?" "Rhen's doing it." "And the chickens—" "In the cages. They're fine. Everyone's fine." She crouches next to me. "You're not fine." "I'm sorting." "You're sorting at a speed that suggests emotional distress." "I'm sorting at a speed that suggests a six-hour potency window. Which is a real thing. Which I told everyone about. Which is why I'm here and not over there helping with the animals, which I should be doing, because nobody knows—" "Mel." Her hand on my wrist. "The animals are handled. Sort." De ep breath out. Okay. She watches me for a minute, then starts s eparating stems from the reject pile without being asked. Wrong technique—she's pulling instead of snapping—but the stems don't matter as much and correcting her right now will cost me thirty seconds I don't have. "You're pulling wrong." Apparently I have the thirty seconds. "Show me." "Snap at the node. Here. See the little bump? Snap, don't pull. Pulling tears the fibers and contaminates the petal oil." She snaps one. Clean. "Better?" "Better."
We work. The pile shrinks. My hands find the rhythm—sort, check, place, reach—and my brain empties into it. The panic about the animals, the ache in my feet, the fact that I haven't eaten since that dried meat Kestria handed me on the trail—all of it drops away. Almost all of it. I sort faster. "Mel?" Not Kestria. I look up. Dara. Standing at the edge of my workspace with her arms crossed and her braid pulled tight and an expression I'd call nervous on anyone else. "You said to find you." Right. I did say that. Told Kestria to send her. Because the crushing technique—because if I'm the only one—because next time someone gets poisoned and I'm not— "Sit down." She sits. Cross-legged. Waits. "Wash your hands first." I nod toward the water basin. "Clean. No oils, no dirt, nothing that could contaminate the extract." She washes. Thorough. Good pressure, gets under the nails. I watch her hands and think mine, nine years ago, standing in a field I found by accident, crushing petals into a bowl I stole from the settlement because they didn't notice and I needed it more. She sits back down. Hands up, dripping. "Now what?" "Now I teach you how to make the only thing standing between this pack and dead wolves." Kestria pauses her stem-snapping. Looks at me. I don't look back. I pick up a handful of purple-edged petals and drop them into the mortar. "These are what matter. The purple edges mean the concentration is high enough to counteract the toxin in moonbright poisoning. White petals work too but they're weaker—about half potency. I use them for fever reduction and wound cleaning. Different pr eparation, different ratios." Dara's watching my hands. "How do you tell the difference? Some of them look in between." "Hold it up." I hand her a petal. "See where the purple fades? If the fade line is past the midpoint toward the stem, it's a ke eper. If the purple only reaches the first third, it's a white. Anything bruised or torn, throw it out. Damaged cells leak the active compound and you'll get inconsistent potency." She turns the petal in her fingers. Holds it to the fading light. "Past the midpoint. This one's good?" "That one's great." "And these?" She grabs two from the unsorted pile. "White. White. See the difference? Hold them next to each other." She does. Her face changes—not much, but enough. She sees it. "The color's completely different when they're side by side." "Your eye adjusts fast once you know what to—" Cedar. Faint. Carried on nothing, and my hands stop for half a second before I catch myself.
"—look for. By the time you've sorted a hundred, you won't need to compare." A crash from across the clearing. Bleating. Someone swearing. I don't look up. "The male goat is headbutting something." "How do you know it's the male?" Dara asks. "The females don't cause problems. The male causes all the problems. That's goats." I pick up the pestle. "Watch. This is the part that matters." I press the pestle into the petals. Slow. Grinding in a circular motion, steady pressure, not too hard—too hard bursts the cell walls too fast and you get a watery mess instead of paste. "The pressure's important. You're persuading, not forcing. The color should bleed out gradually. See?" Purple spreading through the mortar. The smell rising—copper and petrichor, the smell that means safety, that means I have medicine, that means the next person who comes to me broken won't die on my floor. "Here." I hold out the pestle. "Try." Dara takes it. Her grip is different from mine—harder, more decisive. Healer's hands, used to applying pressure to wounds. "Lighter." She eases up. Grinds. The petals resist for a second, then give. "Good. Ke ep that pressure. Consistent. If you push harder, the—" Screaming. Not animal screaming. Human screaming. And then very much animal screaming—Keer Jr.'s unmistakable shriek cutting through everything, followed by a crash and a yell and the specific sound of a large man hitting the ground. I'm on my feet. Across the clearing, Tovar is on his back. Keer Jr. is on Tovar's chest. Wings spread, beak stabbing, spurs raking, every feather on his body puffed to twice its normal size. Tovar's arms are up, shielding his face, and the sounds coming out of his mouth are not dignified. Oh no. "He's fine!" I'm already running. "He's just establishing dominance. Very normal rooster behavior." "GET IT OFF ME—" "Stop flailing, you're encouraging him—" A younger wolf lunges for the rooster and Keer Jr. redirects— launches off Tovar's chest and goes for the new target. The kid stumbles backward, trips over a log, and goes down. Keer Jr. lands on his shoulder and starts pecking his ear. "Don't grab him from behind, he'll—" Too late. The kid grabs. Keer Jr. twists, gets a spur into the kid's forearm, and launches himself toward the cooking area where three women scatter in different directions. I catch him on the third try. One arm around his body, pin the wings, tuck him against my ribs. He screams directly into my ear at a pitch that even impresses me. "You're done. You're done. Everyone's alive." He screams harder. His feet are still going, talons raking the air.
Tovar rolls onto his side, face scratched, ego destroyed. Blood on his cheek from a beak strike that was clearly personal. He looks at me. Looks at the rooster. His mouth opens. "Don't." I point at him with my free hand while Keer Jr. writhes under my arm. "He doesn't understand words and neither will you, apparently, because I said don't approach the cages." "You brought that thing into our territory." "That thing produces offspring that produce eggs that ke ep people fed. You're welcome." A man crouches by the temporary pen, refitting the latch Keer Jr. shredded on his way out. De ep voice, weathered hands, moving with steady patience, clearly someone who’s handled animals before. "Needs a better latch." He doesn't look up. "This one's for rabbits. Too light." "Oh, you know animals?" "K ept them. Before." His hands work the wood, testing the fit. "Your goats need a wider pen too. The male's going to break the rails by morning if he ke eps hitting them." "He will ke ep hitting them. That's his entire personality." I shove Keer Jr. back into the cage and hold the door shut while the man rigs a heavier closure. "You have a name?" "Bram." "Bram, I owe you a conversation about pen construction. Tomorrow morning. Can you make sure the rails hold tonight?" "Already reinforcing them." He stands. Looks at the goats, then at me. "The spotted female's got good lines." "She's my favorite." I lean in, voice down. "Don't tell the others." "Wouldn't dream of it." He goes back to the goat pen. Just like that. No negotiation, no posturing, no asking permission. Sees work, does it. I like him. Orel is standing off to the side. I don't know how long she's been there. Gray hair catching the low light, arms crossed, sharp eyes that miss nothing. She's looking at the rooster with an expression I can't read. "What is that thing's name?" I look her dead in the eyes. "Keer Jr." Silence. The silence where the air itself holds its breath. Bram's hands pause on the goat rail. The kid with the pecked ear looks up. Tovar, still on the ground with blood on his face, makes a strangled sound. Orel's mouth lifts. "Fitting," she says, and walks away.
Kestria is sitting on the ground near my workspace. Face in her hands. Shoulders shaking. "Don't." "I'm not—" She can't finish. "I need to get back to the paste. The potency window is—" "Fitting." She's wheezing. "She said fitting!" I leave her there, still cackling. Dara hasn't moved. Still cross-legged by the mortar, pestle in her hand, watching me walk back with calm patience. "The rooster attacked someone." "I heard. And his name is—" "We're not discussing it." I sit down. Take the pestle back. "Alrighty, where were we?" "Consistent pressure." "Right. Consistent pressure." I start grinding again. My heart's still going from the sprint across the clearing and the rooster and the screaming and the—pressure. Focus on the pressure. "The paste should turn this color. See? Dark purple, almost black at the center. That's the concentration you want. If it stays light, the petals were weak or you crushed too fast." "How do you know when it's done?" "Smell it." She leans in. Wrinkles her nose. "Copper and something green?" "Wet earth. That green smell is wet earth. When you get both together—copper and wet earth—it's ready. If you only get one, ke ep going." "Let me try again." She takes it from me. Grinds. Lighter this time—she remembered. I watch her hands and my chest goes tight. The pestle hits the stone at a different angle than mine. Slightly off-rhythm. Still works. "Why are you teaching me this?" My hands stop sorting. "Because people have zero medicine if I get killed." "That's not what I asked." I look at her. She's stopped grinding. The mortar sits between us, half-done paste going dark at the edges. "I asked why you. Why now? You've been here for days and you haven't shown anyone the paste. The wound treatment, yes. The tonic pr eparation, yes. But this—" She nods at the mortar. "This is the thing that matters." "All of it matters." "This matters most and you know it." The clearing is settling into evening. Fires being lit. Voices lowering. Somewhere Keer Jr. is shrieking at his new latch. The goats have gone quiet, which means Bram got them sorted.
"Nine years," I say. "I've been making this paste for nine years. Alone. In a cottage in the woods with nobody watching and nobody learning and nobody to tell if I got the ratio wrong, which I did, twice, badly. I figured it out because I had to. Because wolves k ept showing up broken and the paste was the only thing that fixed them." Dara waits. "If I die—" I pick up a petal. Torn. Discard. "If I die, that's it. Done. Nine years of work, gone. Every wolf who comes in poisoned after that just dies. Because I didn't teach anyone. Because I was the only one and I stayed the only one and I let that be enough." "So you're scared." "I'm practical." "You're scared and being practical about it." "Those aren't mutually exclusive." Her mouth moves. The beginning of a small smile. "No. They're not." I hand her a fresh batch of petals. "Purple-edged. Sort them. Then crush." She sorts. She's faster now. She's seeing the difference without comparing. I lean back on my palms and watch her work. The pestle sounds different in someone else's hands. Heavier on the downstroke. She'll fix that. "The ratio," I say. "For the final paste. Two parts carrier oil—that's the rendered fat in the jar on my shelf—to one part extract. But if the petals are high-potency, like these, you go three to one. Sometimes four." "How do you know which ratio?" "You test it." I hold up my forearm. The inside, where the skin is thin. "Dab a small amount here. If it burns within ten seconds, it's too concentrated. Dilute. If nothing happens after thirty, it's too weak. Fifteen seconds, mild sting—that's the sweet spot." "You tested it on yourself?" "Who else was going to volunteer?" "Keer Jr., apparently." I look at her. She looks at me. Her face is perfectly flat. "Was that a joke?" "Absolutely not." "That was a joke." "I don't make jokes." "You and I are going to get along." She goes back to crushing, and the clearing shifts. Keer. He's crossing the clearing toward the animal pen, not toward me.
Checking the setup. His eye swe eps the temporary fencing, the goat rails Bram reinforced, the chicken cages stacked against the rock formation. He stops. Looks at the rooster. Don't look at him. The paste. The potency window. The ratio— He turns. Finds me across the clearing. I'm sitting in a pile of flowers with purple hands and a mortar between my knees and Dara next to me and his eye drops to my hands and stays there one beat too long. Two beats. "The cage needs a better latch," I call out, because silence is worse. "Bram rigged a temporary one but it won't hold if he gets worked up again." He walks over. Three people are between us, then two, then none, and he's standing over my workspace, blocking the light. Every wolf within smelling distance knows exactly what my body is doing right now, which is betraying me completely. My neck goes hot. Dara is right there. Focus on the paste. Focus on Dara. Focus on anything exc ept his hands— What his hands did in the dark against tree bark. How they'd feel on my— Don't. The paste. The paste is important! Lives d epend on the paste. "The rooster." "Mhmm." "You're still calling it that?" "He answers to it now. Renaming him at this point would cause confusion, behavioral regression, and emotional distress." "Emotional distress." "Roosters are sensitive, Keer." "That rooster attacked three people in the last hour." "Sensitive and aggressive." My voice comes out higher than I want. "You of all people should understand that." My hands go back to the mortar. Grinding. Too hard. Ease up. His boot shifts on the dirt. Closer. Close enough that I can feel the heat of him and my whole body leans toward it without permission and I want to dig a hole and live in it. "Mel." Don't do it Mel, don't look up. Don't. "The animals are settled?" "Bram's handling the goats. Rhen watered them. The hens are in the cages." I'm talking to the mortar. Needs my full attention. "Everything's under control." He doesn't answer. I can feel him not answering—the silence has weight, has warmth, has the faint cedar underneath it that I'm pretending doesn't exist. "The paste needs processing tonight," I say. "If you need anything from me, it'll have to wait."
A pause. Long enough that I almost look up. Almost. So proud of myself. "Don't work through the night." Low, more of a grunt than anything. "I'll work as long as the petals hold." "Mel." Just my name. One syllable. Short, rough, the L catching on the back of his teeth—and my face is burning and Dara is right there, watching, and I need him to leave before I embarrass myself in front of the only person besides me who's ever had her hands in this mortar. "Goodnight, Keer." Too bright. The voice of a woman who is fine and has always been fine and is not currently on fire from the collarbones up. He goes. His footst eps fade toward the far side of the clearing and I don't watch him leave. Nope. "The paste." Dara picks up the pestle. "The paste." My voice is too high. "Right. Yes. Where were we? The ratio." "Three to one for high-potency petals." "Correct. Good. Yes." If she noticed anything, she doesn't say. Her hands go back to the mortar and mine go back to sorting and the sun is going down and I can still smell cedar and I need to stop— I don't stop thinking about his mouth. Gahhhhh.