The woodcutter, having selected a tree, unslung her ax. As the sharp blade bit into the trunk, clots of snow were shaken loose from above. The ravens paid no heed, not even when the tree fell with a spectacular crash.

The woodcutter gazed with satisfaction at the fallen trunk. Her cut had revealed the tree’s sick center, the rot that would have soon killed it. Breathing heavily, she took off her bright knit cap to cool herself, and her wild hair sprang up like the tangled branches of a thicket. “It’s cold enough to freeze snot,” she said.

The ravens, apparently easily amused, cackled loudly.

The woodcutter let her gaze wander upwards, across the treetops, toward a distant smear of smoke, nearly invisible against the heavy clouds. “Scholars! They’d die of cold before they noticed they were out of firewood.”

“Ark!” protested a raven, as another stole a tidbit right out of his mouth. They scuffled like street children; feathers flew.

“Uncivilized birds!” The woodcutter struck her ax into the stump.

The birds looked up at her hopefully as she approached the dead deer. Using a knife that had been inside her coat, she trimmed back the deer’s stiff skin and sliced off strips of meat, which she fed to the importunate ravens. The birds were not yet sated when she abruptly rose out of her squat and turned toward the northeast.

She was tall: a giant among the Midlanders. Still, she could not see over the treetops, yet she seemed to see something, and her forehead creased. A raven flew up to her shoulder. “Another storm is coming,” the raven said.

“Of course,” she replied. “But there’s something else. Something strange. And terrible.”

“In the village,” said the raven, as though he knew her mind.

“Something has come,” she said.

“No, it has always been.”

“Not always. But a long time. Longer than I’ve been alive.”

“Waiting?” croaked the raven. “Why?”

She shrugged. “Because some things wait.”

“The Sainnites came thirty‑five years ago. Is this thing theirs?”

“Yes, they brought it with them.”

After this firm declaration, raven and woman both were silent. Then, she took a deep breath and added heavily, “It is my problem now.”

“Ark!” exclaimed the raven with mocking surprise.

“Oh, shut up.”

“Coward,” he retorted.

With a sweep of the hand she flung the bird off her shoulder. He landed in the snow, squawking with laughter.

“Tell Emil what I am doing,” she told him.

She left her ax and strode off through the snow, between the crowded trees. She could see the storm coming: a looming black above, trailing a hazy scarf of snowfall. She walked toward it.

In the attic of the nearby stone cottage, Medric the seer dreamed of Raven, the god of death. “I will tell you a story, but you must write the story down,” said Raven. Medric went to his battered desk and found there a fresh candle burning and a newly trimmed pen, which he dipped into an inkwell. “What shall I title this story?” he asked.

“Call it ‘The Raven’s Joke,’” said the god, and began: “One day, Raven was bored …”

Downstairs from the seer’s book‑filled attic, a little girl was very busy. She had been induced to take a bath that morning, but now had smudges of dirt on her wool smock, and a spider web, complete with dead bug, tangled in her hair. The woman who sat on the hearth studying a book paid no attention as the girl rummaged through cupboards and closets, while conversing with the battered stuffed rabbit whose head poked out of her shirt pocket.

A man came into the parlor, looked vaguely around, and said to the woman on the hearth, “You’re letting the fire go out.”

The woman reached for a log and put it onto the coals without taking her eyes off the stained page of the ancient book. Her dark skin, hair, and eyes; her narrow, sharp features; and her long, complexly braided hair identified her as a katrimof the otherwise extinct Ashawala’i people. The book she studied was written entirely in glyphs; few could have made sense of the arcane text.

“Leeba, why have you taken my ink?” the man asked the little girl.

“I need it,” she declared.

“I need it also. What do you need it for? You have neither paper nor pen.”

“I need it for my journey. When I reach a place, I’ll ask the people there if they need anything. And if they need some ink, I’ll sell it to them. By the time I come home, I’ll have a hundred pennies.”

“A hundred pennies? Well, let’s see. How much were you going to charge for this lovely bottle of ink?”

There followed an impromptu numbers lesson. The woman on the floor rubbed her eyes, for the fireplace was smoking. Finally, she looked up from her book to push the split log further into the fireplace, and to blow on it vigorously until the flames caught. The man went out, and came back in with a sheet of paper and a pen. He said to his daughter, “Loan me some ink, I’ll make some pennies to pay you with.”

The woman studied the page, frowning–or, perhaps, scowling– with concentration. A few of the numerous slender plaits of her hair had slipped over her shoulder and looped across the page like lengths of black yarn.

The man paid for his bottle of ink with fifteen paper pennies. “Zanja,” he said.

“Don’t bother me,” the woman said.

He bent over to examine the symbol at which she glared. “My land! What are you reading?”

“Koles.”

“The poet? No wonder you’re surly. The poetry students at Kisha University used to swear he had randomly copied glyphs out of a lexicon.”

“There’s always a pattern. Even if the poet himself didn’t believe he had a reason, or didn’t know what his reason was.” Her voice trailed off into abstraction, and she abruptly reached for something that she expected to find dangling from her belt. “My glyph cards!”

“Leeba!” said J’han, horrified.

Leeba interrupted her cheerful humming. “Thirty pennies,” she demanded.

“Oh, dear,” said J’han, as Zanja uncoiled upward from her seat on the hearth.

But the little girl looked up fearlessly as Zanja plucked a pack of cards from her collected goods. “Your daughter is a thief,” said Zanja to J’han.

“I’m your daughter too,” Leeba protested.

A smile began to do battle with Zanja’s glare. “You are? How long have I had a daughter? How did it happen?”

Leeba clasped her by the knees, grinning up at her. “Thirty pennies!” she demanded.

“Extortion!”

“I’ll buy them for you,” said J’han hastily. “In gratitude. For not strangling her. Thirty pennies, Leeba?” He began counting paper pennies.

Zanja protested, “It’s too much. Look at these worn‑out old cards! They’ve been dunked in water, smeared with mud and grease, and–this is a bloodstain, I believe.”

“There must be some sweat‑stains too,” said J’han. He paid his daughter, took the cards out of Zanja’s hand, and then presented them back to her. “A humble token of my esteem and gratitude.”

Zanja was still smiling as she knelt again on the hearth, tugged the book safely out of range of the crackling flames, and began laying out glyph cards.

Leeba, who came over to watch Zanja lay out the cards, said eagerly, “It’s a story!”

“It’s a story with half its pieces missing. In fact–” She shuffled through the deck. “Did you take one of the cards? A picture of a person standing halfway in a fire?”

“No.” Leeba sat beside her on the hearth and leaned against her. “There’s a girl,” she said, pointing at the card called Silence. “Why is she so sad?”

“Maybe she has no one to play with.”

Through this method of question and answer, the sad girl’s story was revealed: how she got herself in trouble due to the lack of a playmate, and how her toy rabbit came alive after being fed a magical tea from a miniature teapot. Leeba leapt up and ran out of the room. J’han, who had been drawing again, commented, “I certainly hope that Emil’s traveling tea set is well hidden. Is this a suitable replacement for the missing card?”