The wind didn't stop all night.
It pressed against the window like it wanted in. The carved stone stayed on Mara's nightstand, untouched, cold even by morning. She hadn't told her aunt. She hadn't told anyone.
She didn't know how to say, Something left this for me.
After breakfast, her aunt handed her a coat. "You're going into town today."
Mara blinked. "Alone?"
Her aunt nodded. "Bread. Salt. Thread."
There was something off about her voice. Too casual.
Mara opened her mouth to ask why now, why send her today of all days. But her aunt was already by the sink again, drying her hands.
She didn't argue. Just took the list, pulled on her boots, mud now flaked away, and walked out.
The air felt wrong. She knows something is wrong. Still wind, but no chill. As if the cold had shifted inward.
She kept to the narrow path between fields. The trees watched.
A few people passed her as she neared town. No one she recognized. Most didn't look at her twice. One old man did. He paused, eyes narrowing at something near her neck, then turned away.
Mara touched her collar. Nothing there.
The market was small. Quiet. Familiar in the way places are when you've grown up with them but never felt part of them. She bought what she needed.
When she turned to leave, she paused.
Someone was watching her.
Near the old post station, by the edge of a crumbling fence, stood a girl.
She looked about Mara's age, but her clothes were too thin for the weather, her sleeves frayed. She was holding something, a little pouch. And her eyes never moved from Mara's.
Mara took one step forward.
The girl disappeared.
Not walked away. Not ran.
Gone.
Mara's chest tightened. I'll never get used to this place. She glanced around. No one else seemed to notice.
She walked faster on the way back, each step louder than the one before. The wind picked up again. Sharp now. Biting.
Halfway through the fields, she stopped.
Something in the path ahead. Again.
A bird. Still. On its back.
Mara crouched beside it. A crow. Its wings splayed. Eyes closed.
There was no blood.
She reached for it, hesitated, then picked it up gently.
It was warm.
Alive.
But not moving.
Around its leg, tied with an almost invisible string, was a charm.
Small. Wooden. Burned with the same symbol from the tree.
Her fingers shook.
She looked around. Nothing but grass. Sky. Trees in the distance.
The wind fell silent again.
Then the bird twitched.
Its eyes opened.
Not white. Not black.
Silver.
Mara dropped it by reflex. The crow landed upright, wings folding in perfect motion. It looked at her. Held her gaze.
Then flew.
Straight toward the orchard.
She didn't chase it. Couldn't.
She walked home, slower this time, like the air itself had grown heavier.
At the front door, her aunt waited. No apron. No kettle boiling.
"You were gone longer than expected," she said.
"There was a bird," Mara replied. She didn't know why she said it.
Her aunt's face didn't change. But her hand twitched.
"I told you not to stray."
"I didn't."
The silence was sharper than before.
That night, Mara didn't sleep. Her days always end with something unusual. Otherwise her life is nothing but a dull and boring course of housework.
She stared at the ceiling, stone clutched in one hand, the burned charm from the bird in the other.
She thought of the girl at the post station.
Of the crow's silver eyes.
Of the mark that kept showing up.
It didn't feel like a message anymore.
It felt like a memory.
One that wasn't hers.