Two Kinds of Help
You lay them side by side on Sera's quilt: the green diary and the silver handbill.
“The Market is real,” Sera says, nosing the handbill warily. “It travels between the worlds through storm-scars, like a boat following rivers. Everything a sick unicorn needs is sold there — moonsilver salve could stop this grey in a night. But Market prices aren't money, Madison. They're things you are. Memories. Habits. Your favorite word. Traders there can be kind, or clever, or both at once, which is the dangerous kind.”
“And the diary?”
“The diary means your aunt helped mend a storm-scar fifty years ago — which means she knows where one is. An old rift, closed but not forgotten. If it could be opened, even a crack…” Her dark eyes come up to yours, and there's something in them between hope and homesickness. “Help could come through. My herd. My mother. Real healers, Madison — not potato-cellar honey, bless your aunt's hands. But old doors are old, and opening them wrong is how storms happen.”
Moonrise is in four hours. The fairground is west; the orchard is east; you can't do both tonight, and the grey isn't waiting for anyone.