The first snow came in the night.

  I woke to light that felt wrong. Too bright, too clean, bleeding around the shutter edges. When I rolled out of bed my bare feet hit wood that bit like metal. My breath smoked in front of my face.

  Back home, winter meant a different number on a thermostat and a fight with a radiator. Here, it lived in my lungs.

  I cracked the shutters open.

  Oakhaven had turned into a charcoal sketch someone scrubbed with chalk. Rooflines softened under white, fence posts squared off with little caps. The fields vanished under one flat sheet, the path into the forest reduced to a faint line where the snow lay thinner. Smoke from chimneys rose straight up into the low sky, then smeared sideways like someone changed their mind halfway.

  A figure trudged past below, head down, wood bundle strapped to his back. Another followed, then a third with a sled. No one admired the view.

  By the time I made it downstairs, the cold had sunk into the stair rail. My fingers stuck a little when I let go. The common room hit like a wall—heat, noise, bodies—enough that my eyes watered.

  Elspeth had every lamp lit and the hearth going hard. Flames roared up the triple-armed iron, swallowing damp wool smell and pushing out waves of heat that made my skin sting. The inn looked twice its usual size simply because people had filled every corner.

  Benches and stools clustered close to the fire. Kids stripped off outer coats and held out hands to steam, faces bright red from outside. Men stood stamped in the doorway, boots dripping slush, leaning in toward the warmth like plants to a window. A knot of old women had already claimed the long table under the front window, their baskets spilled open with pale bone shavings and half-finished buttons.

  Elspeth glanced up from the bar where she ladled something out of a huge pot. Her hair had escaped its tie in wisps, and flour dusted one cheek.

  “You breathe yet?” She slid a bowl along to a farmer with chapped hands. “You looked out that window like the sky had fallen.”

  “Bit dramatic,” I muttered. “We just got… real winter DLC.”

  She frowned at the unfamiliar word, then brushed it aside. “DLC or not, it’ll chew through wood and bellies the same. You eat.”

  The stew was thinner than her usual. More broth, less everything. I watched the pot between spoonfuls. The line of bowls stayed steady, but the surface dropped. She kept throwing in handfuls of barley, scraps of dried mushroom, cutting the meat smaller.

  Harn leaned on the bar near her, rubbing his palms like they hurt. “West stack’s lower than I like,” he grumbled. “If the drifts stay, we’ll be hauling from the far copse by next week.”

  “We cut early and full,” Elspeth reminded him. “We’ll stretch it. Fire in the hearth, coals in the kitchen, nothing wasted. No private blazes in every fool’s house till Frostwane.” She poured a mug from the kettle, not the stew-pot, and nodded toward a thin woman hovering by the door. “Go sit, Elsie. I saw you shaking. You’re no use to your boys if you freeze.”

  Elsie protested, hands up. “Coin’s short, Elspeth. I’ll—”

  Elspeth shoved the mug into her grip. “Your eldest brings rabbits when he snares them, doesn’t he? Drink.”

  Heat rose off the tea, carrying a scent of mint, something woody, something bitter underneath. Mara’s work. Dried bundles of her herbs hung from a new hook near the kitchen door, tags tied to each with Elspeth’s tight script.

  Elspeth caught me watching. “Kettle’s on as long as the hearth is,” she murmured. “They all know. Tea for any soul who walks in, even if they’ve not got a copper.”

  “You can afford that?” I kept my voice low. “You’re already stretching stew like taffy.”

  “Taffy?” A quick snort. “I can’t afford not to. Hot drink in them puts off sickness. Warm place to sit saves firewood in ten houses. Better they crowd here and sweat than cough alone and die.” Her hand tightened around the ladle. “I measure the leaves. Mara keeps bringing more.”

  Across the room, Mara herself sat at the edge of the button table, a mug cradled between her palms, eyes half closed as if she napped with them open.

  “You’re cutting that hole too close to the edge,” she told Widow Caren without looking down.

  Widow Caren clicked her tongue. “Been cutting buttons since before your mother was weaned, hedge-witch.”

  “Mm. And you cracked three last week and pretended you didn’t care.” Mara finally lifted her gaze. “Closer to the center. Unless you want them snapping on some lord’s fancy cuff.”

  Widow Ira laughed, a dry rattle. “Listen to her. We’re dressing lords now, Caren. From pig teeth.”

  A small pile of finished buttons glowed creamy on a bit of dark cloth. Each one caught the firelight, little moons laid out for counting. Window Ira's gnarled fingers stroked them like coins.

  “I'll have Tamsin drowning in buttons when next she tomes,” she boasted to anyone in range. “These hands don’t even ache when they work bone.”

  Caren snorted into her tea. “They ached all night, you liar.”

  “They did,” Ira agreed, unoffended. “But they remembered how. That’s what matters. When was the last time the likes of us brought silver into town by more than a single piece at harvest?”

  Finn perched on the bench beside them, tongue between his teeth as he scraped at a rough disc with a bit of sand. The shavings clung to his sleeves, pale against wool.

  “Is this one good enough for the city?” He held it up toward me, eyes bright.

  I took it, turned it between my fingers. The hole sat almost dead-center. The surface wasn’t smooth, but he’d rounded the edges. “If they complain, I’ll hit them with my hammer.”

  He grinned, shoulders squaring.

  I took my bowl to a corner near the hearth and let the room soak in.

  Back home, winter had been an inconvenience. Slush on sidewalks, late buses, patients with broken wrists from icy steps. The hospital hummed the same under fluorescent lights. Heating vents clanged but never really failed.

  Here, warmth lived in finite stacks of wood against a wall. In sacks of flour. In jars lined on a shelf. Every log on the fire had a number behind it, some mental ledger Elspeth and Harn kept, visible in the way their eyes flicked toward the woodpile whenever someone opened the door and let the cold in.

  In med school, we’d joked about triage like a grim game. Who gets what, who waits, who gets morphine and a hand to hold. This felt like triage too, only slower. Who got extra ladles of stew. Who got a second mug of tea without paying. Who got nudged closer to the hearth when they thought no one watched.

  Snow hissed against the window glass, soft and relentless.

  I wrapped my hands around my own mug, felt the heat seep into my bones. The inn throbbed with quiet conversation—button gossip, wood gossip, who had slipped in the lane; a baby fussed, someone hummed. The world beyond the walls narrowed to white and wind and the knowledge that if this fire went out, a village would shiver itself thinner overnight.

  Elspeth moved through the room with refills and short, firm words, a tiny sun dragging warmth behind her. Mara’s herbs perfumed the air. Old fingers turned waste bone into pretty tokens that might buy more grain than any of them had ever seen.

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  I had no thermostat to adjust, no shift to clock into, no discharge summaries waiting. Just this room, these people, this fragile bubble of heat in a winter that did not care.

  Outside, the snow kept falling. Inside, the kettle never stopped.

  Mara’s eyes had drifted shut again. Or pretended to. Hard to tell with her.

  I crossed the room with my bowl and set it on the table near her elbow.

  “If I sit here any longer staring at everyone breathe, I’ll start sorting them by cough color.”

  One of her eyebrows climbed. “You already do.”

  “I do,” I admitted. “So. Tell me how to make myself useful before I start auscultating with a spoon.”

  Her gaze sharpened, cutting through the steam and noise. “You already taught them their miracle varnish. You swung your hammer at more pigs than I care to count. You’re broken yourself more often than not. That not enough for you?”

  I leaned against the table, careful of the button trays. “Where I come from, winter fills beds. Lungs, mostly. Old people, kids. Slips on ice. Frostbite. Right now everyone’s warm and fed and supervised in one building. That’s… convenient.”

  Her mouth tilted. “Convenient.”

  “For a clinic.”

  The word earned me a slow blink.

  “Not beds,” I added. “Just a corner. Walk in with your cough, your chopped fingers, we look you over, send you away with something that helps. Before it gets bad.”

  “Clinic,” she repeated, tasting it like an herb she didn’t trust yet.

  “You already do it,” I pointed out. “Only people wait until they’re half-dead before they shuffle to your cottage. And then you don’t sleep for three days.”

  She sniffed into her mug. “You’ve been talking to Elspeth.”

  “I watched you fall asleep on a stool stirring that cough syrup last week.”

  Her fingers tightened around the clay. The lines around her mouth eased, just a fraction.

  “You think you know some of what I know.”

  “I know how to clean a wound,” I answered. “How to stitch it without leaving a mess. How to spot when a cough is going to drown someone. And you know every plant within a day’s walk and what it does to a body. Between us we could catch things early. Keep more people on their feet.”

  Her gaze flicked over the crowded room. Red noses. Rough hands. Laughter cut by the occasional bark of a deep, wet cough.

  “You want to work for free,” she muttered. “With me.”

  “I’m already here. I’m taking up space and food. Let me pay rent the way I know how.”

  That won the ghost of a smile.

  “You and your strange rents.” She set her mug down. “Fine. We do it my way. No one leaves here with a bottle they don’t understand. No one gets cut open because you’re bored.”

  “I don’t operate in inns,” I told her. “Standards.”

  “Tomorrow then,” she decided. “After breakfast. That corner by the window. Good light. Less smoke. Bring that fancy needle you bought off Tamsin.”

  My hand went to the little case in my pocket on reflex. “You noticed that.”

  “I notice my patients selling their silver for sharp bits of steel.” She reached for her satchel. “We’ll need more herbs if you’re serious about this.”

  “Most things are under snow,” I reminded her.

  “Snow isn’t stone.” She fished out a few brittle stems, laid them in my palm. “Frostmint. There’s a patch that clings to the south stones by the river. The snow there never sits deep. Bring me a basket full. Good for skin, good in teas if you balance it. You can smell it through the cold if you know how.”

  The crushed leaf filled the air with a sharp, green scent that cut through stew and smoke.

  “Anything else?”

  Her finger tapped each plant in turn, a roll call. “Lungwort. Clings to the old oak trunks; looks like wet leather. Don’t slip and crack your skull fetching it. Willow bark for fevers, you know that one. And if you see any cat-tail by the shallows not frozen through, pull the roots. You’ll see.”

  I closed my fingers around the stems. “Got it.”

  “Be careful,” she added. “The river path ices first. I am too old to drag you back again.”

  “I’m very portable,” I said. “We’ll be fine.”

  She snorted into her tea.

  —

  The path to the river turned to glass under the snow. I skidded twice, caught myself on frozen brush, and prayed I wouldn't die in a starter zone to ice.

  Frostmint did cling to the stone, bright against the dull grey, leaves toughened by cold. Lungwort hung in slick sheets on oak trunks, forcing my fingers numb as I peeled it free. By the time I trudged back, basket full, snow had crusted on my eyebrows.

  Mara looked me over at the inn door, lips twitching. “Didn’t crack your skull.”

  “I saved the head injury for a busier day.”

  We claimed the corner under the window. Mara spread a clean cloth. I laid out my needle and thread and the few wrapped instruments I’d begged off Tamsin. Elspeth found a stool that passed for a bench. Word travelled faster than smoke.

  Old Ira came first, as if she had never once pretended she wasn’t interested.

  “My fingers split when I spin,” she grumbled, hands like cracked leather. “You’re not putting me in bed for that.”

  “Not unless you misbehave.” I took her hands. The skin over her knuckles felt like dried river mud. Every flex threatened another tiny wound.

  Mara handed me a small pot. “Render from your pigs, wax from Myles’ hives,” she told me. “You know what to add.”

  I scraped a lump of boar fat into a bowl near the hearth, watched it soften, then shaved in beeswax and crushed frostmint leaves. The smell edged toward bright instead of greasy. I worked it smooth with the back of a spoon until it glistened, then let it cool to a thick paste.

  “Rub this in at night and after you wash,” I told Ira, massaging a dab into the back of her hand. “Especially around the nails. It’ll keep the cracks from forming and help the old ones close.”

  She flexed. The shine seeped into dry lines. “Feels… odd.”

  “Good odd,” Mara decided, sniffing the balm. “We’ll make more.”

  By midmorning, the line at our corner included two children with barking coughs, a man with a split chin from misjudged firewood, and half of Gideon’s household clutching handkerchiefs.

  “Tea first,” Mara ordered the coughs. She weighed dried lungwort and frostmint into the kettle, added a pinch of something yellow and bitter that made my nose wrinkle. “Small cups. Three times a day. Not at night unless you like running to piss in the dark.”

  I lifted the boy’s shirt and pressed my ear to his back, counted breaths, listened for crackles. His lungs sounded clear, for now. The girl’s, not quite. I pressed firmer.

  “You’re pressing the life out of her,” her mother protested.

  “Lungs are fine,” I told her. “Not drowning yet. The tea will help loosen things. Keep them in the warm, bring them back if she starts breathing fast even while she sits, or if her ribs pull in hard here.”

  I drew a line with my finger under the girl’s ribs. Her eyes went wide, then crossed as she tried to look.

  The man with the split chin bled over his collar. I cleaned it with boiled water and salt under Mara’s watch, then threaded my new needle. The steel slid through skin like it knew the way. The thread followed without snagging, neat and small.

  Mara hovered over my shoulder, eyes narrowed like a hawk.

  “Not too tight,” she murmured.

  “I like my faces flexible,” I answered. “He’ll still be able to shout at his children.”

  He tried to protest. The stitches pulled his mouth and turned it into a garbled noise. Finn giggled behind his hand.

  By afternoon, we had a row of small jars and paper-wrapped bundles on the table. Balm for hands and heels. Parchment packets of cough infusion, marked with shaky symbols that even Widow Caren could remember. A mash of crushed garlic-root, honey, and bruised herbs that we spread on a boy’s infected finger before binding it in clean cloth.

  “We’ll change it tomorrow,” I told him. “Don’t get pig manure on it.”

  “I don’t play with pigs,” he muttered.

  “Then you’re safe. For now.”

  Mara watched him scamper off, then poured herself a thin cup of our own lungwort brew. She looked tired, but her shoulders sat easier.

  “This could work,” she allowed.

  “It is working,” I countered.

  Her eyes slid to the door, to the swirl of snow each time it opened and closed. “Until something bigger comes.”

  I didn’t answer. There was always something bigger. That was just life, not prophecy.

  Beakly stayed gone that whole first week of the clinic.

  Every time the door banged open, my head snapped up expecting a flare of black feathers and offended screech. Instead, I got farmers stamping snow off boots.

  Finn noticed. “He’s been gone longer than last time,” he whispered during a lull, breath fogging. “Do you think he found a better village?”

  “He wouldn’t betray his public like that,” I told him. “He likes the adoration here.”

  But when I went out in the thin blue light before dawn to pee, the paddock stood empty and the snow on his usual perch lay smooth and untouched.

  On the ninth day, a shadow crossed the yard. A heavy thump shook snow from the inn roof.

  I shoved the door open with my shoulder, half-wrapped bandage still in hand.

  Beakly stood in front of the paddock like a statue someone had carved from midnight. His feathers drank the weak light, colors buried deep in the black. Frost rimed the curve of his beak and clung to the scaling on his legs. His breath hit the air in thick puffs.

  He dropped something at my feet. A duskleaper, its fur already stiffening.

  “That’s it?” I nudged it with my boot. “What happened to your usual boar three-course special?”

  He clicked his beak once. The sound held no explanation. His eyes, when they met mine, looked distant, cold.

  “You look like death,” I told him, softer. “The stylish kind. But still.”

  He turned his head, presenting his neck for a moment. Habit made my hand lift. When I reached to scratch the warm place under his jaw, he stiffened. The muscles along his neck went hard, then he flicked away, hopping beyond arm's reach, wings spreading as if the air itself annoyed him.

  “Fine.” I pulled my hand back. “No touching. Professional relationship. I get it.”

  He launched into the air in a gust of feathers and cold and climbed until he vanished into the low clouds.

  The empty yard yawned wider.

  Inside, Mara waved me back to the table with an impatient twist of fingers.

  “Bird not dead, is he?”

  “Standoffish,” I answered, tying off the bandage. “It’s winter. People get weird.”

  “Can't get any weirder,” she muttered under her breath, too low for anyone else to catch.

  I pretended I hadn’t heard that, because I had a line of patients and chapped hands and lungs to listen to, and because admitting I missed my giant carnivorous mount more than anyone else I knew in my actual real life felt like more than I could untangle that day.

  Instead, I checked another pulse, warmed another pair of fingers with balm, and hoped that somewhere above the grey clouds, Beakly’s ridiculous silhouette still cut across the sky.