With dawn just painting the sky, Tamsin’s cart rumbled down the dirt path, its wheels creaking a farewell tune. She sat perched on the seat, wind-reddened face sharp in the crisp morning air. The villagers gathered to see her off, a mix of hope and farewell on their faces. Her mule brayed once, steam rising from its nostrils, as if it too was eager to put the road behind it.

  Tamsin waved a lazy hand, her grin cheeky under her patched scarf. “Promise I’ll be back next moon,” she called, voice carrying over the quiet murmur of goodbyes.

  “You’re taking a risk,” Elspeth observed, arms crossed. No need to elaborate; everyone knew the dangers that lurked beyond their patched fences.

  “Life’s a risk,” Tamsin countered, her eyes gleaming with a merchant’s mischievous delight. “I’d get bored otherwise.”

  She laughed and flicked the reins, setting the cart in motion. The villagers waved until she was a speck against the foliage, swallowed by a world that waited just beyond our tenuous walls, weaving through alliances of convenience and necessity.

  Elspeth’s back room smelled like boiled bones and yeast.

  We’d commandeered one of her long tables, scrubbed it, then covered it in a motley collection of treasures: cleaned grumbleboar tusks and small bones, a jar of cheap oil, a pile of rags, Kael’s smallest files and awls, and a little bowl of fine sand Sister Myriam had let me steal from the chapel stores.

  Finn hovered so close his hair almost brushed the tusks.

  “So we’re making… teeth,” he breathed.

  “We’re making money,” I nudged a tusk toward him. “Teeth that turn into coin. Buttons first. Fancy ones. The kind city folk pay too much for.”

  Keael lounged in the doorway with two other old men, arms folded, expression halfway between bored and amused. Behind them, a pair of old widows—Maud and Brenna—had taken seats with the boneless patience of women who’d already lived through three waves of bad ideas.

  “Never heard of anyone paying silver for pig bits,” Maud remarked. Her hands remained firmly in her lap.

  “Tamsin literally showed us some,” I reminded her. “Remember? ‘Hunter’s Lineage’ cuffs?”

  Brenna snorted. “Travelling merchants talk. Water’s wet.”

  I picked up a tusk, the cream curve fitting in my palm. “Look, you already use bone for knife handles. This is the same, just smaller and rounder. City tailors stitch them onto cloaks, tell some story about noble ancestors wrestling beasts, charge triple. We do the fiddly work; Tamsin does the lying. Everybody wins.”

  Finn’s eyes shone. “I can wrestle beasts.”

  “You can wrestle the broom,” Elspeth called from the kitchen, slamming an oven door. “Start there.”

  The other kids had gathered—four village brats of assorted sizes, plus two gawky teens. I tapped the tusk on the table.

  “All right. Step one: cut off a slice as thick as your fingernail. You want a disk. Kael?”

  Kael stepped up with a small saw and worked through the first tusk with slow, even strokes. Bone dust floated up. The kids leaned in.

  “That,” I pointed at the dust, “goes nowhere near your mouths. Eyes either. If you rub them, you’ll regret it.”

  “Can we keep the dust?” one of the teens squinted at it. “For… something?”

  “Ask Myriam if she wants it for mysteries. For now, no.” I took the disk from Kael, thick and rough-edged. “Step two: smooth the edges. Here.”

  I ran the file around the circle, scraping until the sharp bits rounded off. The sound rasped against the cozy clatter from the kitchen. After that, I dipped the disk into the sand, rubbed it between my fingers, then wiped it with a rag and a smear of oil. Bone went from chalky to a soft, creamy sheen.

  Finn’s jaw dropped. “It changed.”

  “That’s called ‘finish’. People pay extra for finish.” I held it up. “Last part: two holes. This is the important bit. If you push too hard, it cracks.”

  I braced the disk against a little scrap of leather, took the awl, and twisted gently until it bit through. Repeat on the other side. Two neat holes. A real button.

  Elspeth drifted in for a look, wiping her hands on her apron. “Pretty.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  Kael grunted. “That’s one. How many you plan to make before snow? Ten?”

  I slid the button into Finn’s hand. “You lot. Try it.”

  Chaos erupted.

  Files scraped, saws squeaked, bone dust fluffed everywhere. I moved from kid to kid, adjusting grips, stopping one enthusiastic boy from trying to punch a hole straight through a tusk with brute force.

  “You’re not killing it again,” I told him. “Treat it like it’s already suffered enough.”

  Maud watched with pursed lips. At some point, without fanfare, Brenna picked up a file and a small bone and tested the motion.

  “Just to show you how crooked you’re doing it,” she muttered, mostly to herself.

  I hid a smile and shifted to make room for her.

  Finn’s first disk broke in half when he jammed the awl in.

  His face crumpled. “It’s rubbish.”

  “It’s practice,” I nudged the pieces back toward him. “You’ve seen me swing a hammer, right?”

  “Too often.”

  “Exactly. I keep missing, but I still practice. You get another tusk.” I handed him one. “Gently this time. Think like a mouse. Not an ox.”

  “Elspeth says I’m a terror,” he protested.

  “Be a precise terror.”

  The second disk survived. It came out uneven, one side thicker than the other, holes a bit off-center. He held it up anyway, chest puffed out.

  “I made a button.”

  “You did.” I nodded at it. “That’s going on someone’s cloak, and they’ll pay nicely for the privilege of losing it in the mud.”

  The kids laughed. Even Kael’s mouth twitched.

  By the time the sun reached the high windows, we had a small pile of misshapen but recognizable buttons. Brenna and Maud had each produced two that looked almost professional, though they both acted like they’d spun straw into manure rather than gold.

  “Maybe Tamsin will give you half a copper for the lot,” Maud tucked her four into a separate little pile. “For pity.”

  “She’ll give more,” Finn argued. “They’re good. We’ll make loads.”

  He turned to me, eyes blazing with that stubborn little spark that made adults nervous and gods amused.

  “We can keep doing this,” he said. “Me and the others. Every afternoon, when we’re not helping with the fence. We’ll have a big box of them when Tamsin comes back.”

  The other kids chimed in at once.

  “I can carve the little ones—my fingers fit better.”

  “I’ll do the holes. I’m careful.”

  “We can trade turns watching the little ones so they don’t eat the dust.”

  Elspeth raised an eyebrow at that last one. “Yes. Do that part.”

  I looked at the fence through the open door, where fresh, resin-dark planks ringed most of Oakhaven. Only a few gaps remained, skeletons of posts waiting for skin. The big push was nearly over. Soon the urgent work would thin out. Idle hands. Restless, anxious minds when the first real cold set in.

  “Buttons it is,” I agreed. “But I want a second project too.”

  I picked up a little glass vial from the tray I’d hidden behind a flour sack. Harvested from Tamsin’s empties, a few old medicine bottles, anything glass Elspeth could spare.

  “Glowgourd lanterns,” I told them. “You remember the glowgourd juice we throw out for the resin? We’re going to stop throwing that away.”

  Finn leaned over it as if it might bite. “It glows. In a bottle?”

  “If we do it right.” I set out the pieces: bowls of glowgourd juice mixed with some mashed pulp, a pinch bowl of salt, another of wood ash, bits of beeswax. “Juice plus a little salt and ash so it doesn’t rot. Then we seal it with wax, tight. When you shake it, it glows for hours. No open flame. No burning down your house if someone kicks it over in the dark.”

  That got Elspeth’s attention. “Show me.”

  The elders shifted again, uneasy.

  “Glass,” Kael pointed out. “We barely have enough for what we need now. And you want to lock it up with pig food.”

  “Nonflammable light sells better than pig food,” I answered. “Sailors, miners, caravans. Tamsin said captains will pay three days’ wages to keep from lighting themselves on fire below decks.” I poured glowgourd juice into the vial with a small funnel.

  Brenna sighed and reached for a vial. “All right then. If we’re going to make foolishness, we might as well do it properly.”

  We mixed and tamped and spilled. When I finally dripped melted wax into the vials’ mouths and thumbed the stoppers in, the table looked like a crime scene.

  I cupped one finished vial in my hand and shook it.

  Soft light bloomed inside, steady and pale, like a captured firefly with good manners. The kids gasped. Even the old men leaned in despite themselves.

  Elspeth turned the vial over in her fingers. No leaks. No flicker. Just patient glow.

  “That,” she murmured, “will sell.”

  Finn grabbed one and shook it so hard I winced. It held.

  “We’ll fill a whole crate,” he declared. “Buttons on top, lanterns underneath. By next month. Right?”

  The other kids nodded, solemn as an oath.

  I watched them dividing tasks—who’d collect glowgourd juice, who’d polish buttons, who’d nag Brenna and Maud for more holes—and felt the press of the season in the doorway breeze. The air had a new edge, the kind that slipped under clothes and stayed there. Outside, the trees had traded bright green for duller shades, a few leaves already bruised yellow at the edges. Late autumn creeping in around the village, quiet and implacable.

  I tried to map it onto any place I knew. Back home, hospital winters meant grey mornings and slush, cold that seeped through scrubs on the walk from parking lot to ER. Here, I had no baseline. Would snow bury the fence? Would the river freeze? Would their little stockpiles hold?

  I rubbed my thumb over the smooth face of Finn’s second button, tucked into my palm, the bone warm from my skin.

  Beakly’s absence tugged at the back of my thoughts. He’d started vanishing more often, slipping over the treeline at dawn and coming back well after dark, if at all. Yesterday he hadn’t returned at all; the day before that, he’d dropped a half-eaten hare in the yard and taken off again, restless.

  Did giant ravens migrate? Normal ones back home mostly stayed put, if I remembered right. Scavengers didn’t waste a good trash supply. But he wasn’t exactly a normal anything.

  I glanced up through the high window, where only a thin slice of sky showed, pale and cold. Empty.

  Finn bumped my elbow, glowgourd light flickering over his grin.

  “Look,” he urged. “It’s like bottled magic.”

  “Better than magic,” I told him. “You can make more.”

  His fingers tightened around the vial. Outside, hammers thudded against the last naked posts of the fence. Inside, bone rasped under files, wax cooled, and the air filled with the stubborn, homely sounds of people preparing for a winter none of us could quite picture yet.