Thorn lifts a palm-sized sod and you both look into a cellar of threads.

White, branching, busy without bustle. The soil is not dirt. The soil is a market that never shouts.

“Both sides gain,” Thorn says, tasting a village-word like a new berry. “Mutualism, if you like a name. Tree is not kind for a medal. Fungus is not kind for a song. Kindness is the wrong hat. It is a trade that works so well it looks like a spell.”

Elder Briar, above you, adds, “Cut a strip for a road, leave it baked in sun, and the threads die in the open. Then the trees at the edge drink alone. Then the edge walks inward. That is a sickness with no fever.”

Thorn seats the sod back as carefully as a lid on a pot. “You will put it back. That is the first rule after looking.”

Your knees are damp. You will smell like under-song all day, which is an honor.

Dawn-watch, Thorn says, is the other skill: how to see the Pale One without turning seeing into hunting.

Council, Briar says, is the skill after that: how to make two peoples share a map.