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“He genuinely doesn’t,” she said. “Years at this stall and he doesn’t… Goran. Sweet giant. The grannies have a betting pool about your forearms. It has written rules. Mrs. Piddock holds the book.”

Three stalls down, Mrs. Piddock became very busy with her onions.

“The county is curious,” Asha said, “and fond, and it owes you favors from here to the dales. Bram can’t do it, the roof’s short on funds, the frost is coming, and my sister sleeps at the Healing House when the ward’s full. In the cold. Under the part with no roof yet.”

“That’s low,” I said.

“I bake with what’s in the pantry.” She put the plate in my hands. Her voice stayed light, but her eyes had darkened. “One afternoon, Goran. For the roof.”

I glanced over her head at Aris. Aris stared back with nothing on her face at all, which was how she looked when it mattered. Five years she’d kept that house. She’d hauled beams with me and never once asked for anything.

I never had a chance past the bread.

“Forehead kisses only,” I said. “No mouth.”

Asha’s face lit up. “I agree, sworn and witnessed.”

“And nobody tells Rain until I⁠—”

“Oh, she knows,” Aris said. She was already walking away, her work complete. “Two weeks until the fair. Don’t get injured.”

Plowing weather came two days later, the ground cold enough to cut clean. Fall plowing had to land in a narrow window. Too soon and the stubble was green, too late and the frost would’ve locked the field.

That morning the field rang under my boot heels. I harnessed Turnip at first light while Rain stood on the porch with a mug of tea, wrapped in her shawl, watching us.

“Explain the biting again,” she called out.

“First hour’s an argument.” I backed Turnip into the traces. He took the bit with the sound he always makes, that of a barrel rolling downhill. “Plow says go straight. He says he knows a better line. Plow wins. He bites it once for respect, then works.”

“And where does the argument stand this morning?”

Turnip swung his head toward the porch and blew hard through his nostrils. His breath spread across the yard in a low fog.

“Negotiations open,” I said, and she laughed into her tea.

The day started that well.

We took the long field first, the one that ran down toward the creek willows. There was no work I knew better. I set things up, spoke once, and my beast leaned into the leather. The world opened in a long dark ribbon behind me, steam coming off the turned earth. Gulls found me from nowhere and landed, pecking at whatever they could find. No need to talk. Turnip pulled, I held the line, and the field turned from stubble to soil one step at a time.

Rain came out midmorning with the tea jug and sat on the low wall to watch, Ginger beside her. I plowed better with an audience. It was a true fact. A male plowed a straighter furrow when a witch was watching.

The trouble came with the sun still climbing.

Ginger had been working a furrow of her own all morning. A sprite, the ribbon thief from the Wildwood hedge, with Rain’s yellow ribbon knotted around its middle, had been flying near the field’s edge since we started, drawn by the bright bits on Turnip’s harness buckles.

The sprite flew out over the field.

Ginger stalked the sprite while it dove for Turnip’s cheek-strap. She leaped at full stretch, directly under Turnip’s front hooves mid-turn.

Turnip was gentle with what he could see. He could not see her. She was a warm, small thing under his blind side, and he was a ton of startled creature with a plow on his back and me pacing behind. He shied sideways, lunging for the open field.

I thrust myself between him and the cat.

Turnip reared up, his horn stabbing out, scraping along my side.

“Easy,” I said in a low voice, my hands lifted, carefully grabbing onto the harness, urging him down. “Just a cat. A silly, foolish cat.”

I backed him away and dropped the reins. He stood where I left him, trembling, his sides heaving, his eye white all around.