The Girl Who Mended Fences
The mist came down from the Hallow Hills every morning like a held breath finally released, curling through Thornwick's crooked lanes and settling over rooftops thatched in gray straw. Elara liked to think of it as the village exhaling in its sleep, still not quite ready to wake. She was always the first one out in it, boots crunching against frost-stiffened grass, breath fogging the air before her in small, determined clouds.
That morning she carried a coil of rope over one shoulder and a hammer tucked into her belt, making her way toward the Dunmores' east field where a stretch of fence had finally given up its long argument with time and toppled sideways into the mud. She'd promised Old Maren she wouldn't be gone past midmorning — there were tinctures to steep, roots to grind, and a delivery to make to the widow Hobbs, whose knees ached worse with every turn of the season. But the fence needed mending before old man Dunmore's goats found the gap and went wandering into the Hollow Wood, and Elara had never been one to let a promise sit half-finished, whether it was to Maren or to herself.
"You're up early, even for you," called Tam Fletcher from his doorway, a mug of something…
