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Melissant wrote none of it down, but it all went into the record anyway. The Hollow’s record is whatever gets remembered loudest.

Ginger grumbled in my lap. War. This means war.

The wheelwright’s family sat in a cluster by the fire in yesterday’s clothes. The Puddlefoots kept counting their children to be sure they weren’t missing one. With seventeen under the age of twelve, I couldn’t blame them.

One of the grannies had brought her knitting, because a grandmother would bring her knitting to a party even if it was being held to celebrate the end of our world. She worked her needles and narrated everyone’s misfortune back to them in a too-satisfied undertone.

Rufus poured and poured. He had one cure for messes like this, and he served it to the whole Hollow at once, at no cost.

Zeph Cloudcall circled the room, wringing her hands and apologizing to whoever would listen. She’d apologized to Aris twice, to me three times, to Rufus, to the teaspoonless village, and once, with feeling, to a chair.

“It was meant to be a nudge,” she told our end of the table, her hair hanging half in her face. “A gentle autumn ripening nudge, two degrees, maybe three, lovely for the squashes. The working somehow got screwed up, and I want you all to know the cats-and-dogs component remains unexplained by any theory of weather I have ever⁠—”

“Zeph,” Aris said, pointing to a small glass on the table nearby. “Sit. Drink. You’re doing laps and it’s driving me out of my mind.”

Melissant finished her notes and gaveled the room to order with a wooden salad fork. Her silver gavel had been stolen by the sprites, and I had a feeling they weren’t going to give it back, no matter how high a ransom she paid.

“We shall address the problems first,” she said. “The Healing House needs a roof before frost, and roofs cost money.”

“Which…we don’t have a lot of,” Aris said in a low voice, sipping her drink.

“What about the fair?” Mrs. Honeycake asked, standing up with flour still dusting her forearms. “All the fees could go to the Healing House roof. The harvest fair could become a roof-raising.”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

Somebody offered a cart. Somebody else offered to paint the signs. The wheelwright, who had slept four to a room and lost his kitchen ceiling, offered a free week of labor. His wife didn’t try very hard to catch his sleeve. This was who she’d married.

Within a minute, the fair had stopped being a simple festival and become a barn-raising with decorations. The mood in the Silver Bell lifted.

“The kissing booth too,” Asha said, standing up beside her sister. “Bram’s already agreed to dole out kisses, and I’ll point out that the booth is about to become the single most profitable part of the fair. I’ll be taking bets on it.”

Bram Weatherby, standing along the right wall with his little brothers, went scarlet from his collar to his hairline. The twins tipped their heads back and shrieked, though that was imps for you.

The knitting grandmother whistled.

Asha already had her notebook out. She licked her pencil, wrote a heading I could read upside down from three chairs away—KISSES—and started taking the shouted wagers.

“Odds on the booth clearing more than the cider tent?” she called over the rising noise. “Grannies to the front.”

Bram squawked as loudly as the sprites had and turned, trying to force himself through the wall, but his brothers leaped on him and held him in place.

“I will personally bake for whoever raises the most for the roof,” Mrs. Honeycake said over the uproar. “A pie or a cake. Even a few…selective cookies.”

This almost turned the kissing booth into a civic duty. The Hollow did things like this. Hand it a disaster, and we’d have a festival planned before our tea went cold.

Melissant glanced down at her list before her gaze lifted to me.

“Rain Trevil,” she said. “You also have no roof.”

“The shop’s sound,” I said. “I can sleep there. I’ll rig a cot between the counter and the⁠—”

“You will not,” Mrs. Honeycake said, her eyes wide, her hand to her throat.

“There’s a camp bed at the Healing House,” I said.

Aris grunted. “I’ll remind you that the Healing House has no roof. That won’t work well if we experience more…unusual weather.”

“That’s a good point. It was just a thought.”