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Snow fell gently on the statue, which was, the statue thought, lovely but unexpected. Flakes dusted her nose and fell onto her unblinkable eyes, and she wondered why she wasn’t in the alcove in the North Reading Room on her usual pedestal.

Clearly, I missed something important, she thought.

She used to have a view of floor-to-vaulted-ceiling bookshelves filled with priceless (and dusty) books and scrolls. Now she was facing a grove of pine trees, wreathed in snow and laden with pine cones.

She knew she’d been drifting ever since her transformation, but this time, she must have drifted for quite a while and slept very deeply to miss being moved from the Great Library to…

wherever this was. How long? she wondered.

How much did I miss? Where am I? Between two pines, she spotted a glint of reflected sunlight, but she couldn’t identify what—

Suddenly, she shivered, and a ripple spread down her wooden limbs.

Given that she was an inanimate object, she shouldn’t be able to shiver, so why did— It intensified into a shudder, and she heard a creak that sounded like a tree bending. Oh no, was that inside me?

And then: crackle, crackle, crackle . She felt bubbles rising from her toes up to her knees, through her thighs and into her torso, where they swirled faster and faster.

For so very long, she’d felt nothing. And now suddenly, she felt everything.

She burned. She froze. She hurt. She felt as if she were being ripped apart, and then she felt as if she were soaring through the clouds, her head spinning with a thousand colors. She was an exploding star, bursting with indescribable pain and incandescent joy.

And then Terlu Perna, formerly the Fourth Librarian of the Second Floor, East Wing, of the Great Library of Alyssium (jewel of the Crescent Islands Empire), and much more recently a statue made of wood on display in the North Reading Room, condemned for the breaking of imperial law regarding unauthorized spellwork…

collapsed into a heap on the snowy forest floor.

She was flesh again.

Terlu felt the wet snow seep through the thin fabric of her librarian tunic. It prickled her left thigh and her hip at the same time as the breeze chilled her bare arms. She sucked in air and felt the cold burn her throat, and she expelled it in a laugh.

Oh, she could feel! She could breathe! She could move! She could talk! At the top of her lungs, she sang, “La-la-la!” Her voice cracked, her throat dry from disuse. A bird startled from the top of a nearby pine tree. “Sorry!” she called to it as it flew away, red wings bright against the white sky.

She breathed again as deeply as she could and inhaled the scent of pine and the crisp taste of winter, so sharp and clean that it hurt all the way down to her lungs.

In fact, now that she noticed it, all of her hurt: every joint and every muscle ached so badly they shook, but she couldn’t stop smiling. She was alive again!

For a moment, it overwhelmed her. She had very nearly given up hope. She’d had, after all, no rational reason to hope, except for the simple fact that she’d remained alive.

Terlu pushed against the ground to stand up.

And promptly fell down.

“Ow.”

More snow soaked through her tunic. Pushing with both hands, she rocked forward into a squat.

“Steady,” she said. “You can do this, Terlu.” Her voice was stronger now, only wavering a little.

Slowly, she stood. Her knees wobbled, and she grabbed on to the branch of the nearest tree.

Its bark bit into her palm, but she didn’t fall.

She shivered as the cold seeped into her skin. Wouldn’t it be terrible if she finally was restored to human and she froze to death immediately? Yes, it would. Whoever restored me can’t have intended me to freeze.

Whoever restored…

Of course! There had to be a sorcerer nearby who’d cast the spell to free her.

Probably they just didn’t know that their spell had taken effect already.

As soon as they realized it had, they’d show up with blankets, coats, hot chocolate, and a really excellent explanation for where she was and why she was here, and she could thank them from the bottom of her soul.

“Hello!” Terlu called. “I’m…” What was the word? Awake? Alive? Fleshy? She didn’t want to shout that she was fleshy. “I’m here! Over here! Hello?”

She waited for someone to answer, but no one did.

The snow fell as soft as a whisper, and the wind brushed against the branches, making a shush, shush sound.

It felt as if she were the only living soul in the forest, but that couldn’t be.

Someone had to have been responsible for the spell that revived her, so where was that someone?

“You did it!” she called. “You saved me! Yay! Can you come out so I can thank you? Really, I’m very grateful! And also cold!”

Still, no one answered.

Terlu wrapped her arms around herself, but it didn’t help much.

She tried a hesitant step forward. Her legs shook like a baby deer’s, but she kept herself upright.

She took another step and then another. Ahead was the glint she’d seen between the pine trees.

She aimed for that, since every other direction was just trees and snow.

Why would anyone cast a spell to restore her and not stick around to see if it worked?

It was irresponsible spellwork, that’s what it was.

At the very least, the sorcerer could have pinned a note to her that said, “Just have to duck out for a quick bite to eat. Be back soon.” Or they could have left a sign telling her which way to go.

Or an arrow. It wouldn’t have been so hard to make an arrow out of rocks or stray pine cones: This way to warmth and food!

Unless whoever it was didn’t want her to find shelter?

What if this was a strange part of her punishment that she’d somehow not known about?

She had been in shock at the verdict—well, no, not at the verdict.

She had been one hundred percent guilty.

She hadn’t expected, though, for the punishment to be so severe.

No one had. Terlu thought of Rijes Velk arguing for leniency…

but they’d wanted to make an example of her, and that was that.

She’d been wood-ified. Or should that be solidified?

En-statued? There wasn’t a proper verb for it, which bothered Terlu—if you were going to do a thing to someone, there should be a verb for it, and if there wasn’t, you should reconsider doing it at all.

Snow fell harder. It swirled around her, and she held her arm in front of her face to keep it from flying into her eyes.

It was ankle-deep between the trees, and she had to march her feet, lifting her knees up high, to make progress.

The pine trees were clumped together with branches that poked her skin every time she brushed against one.

Ducking under a thicker branch, she knocked into it with her back, and an armful of snow fell onto her neck.

She yelped and scooted forward. So soon after her reawakening, she wasn’t ready to react to anything that fast—she fell forward onto her knees.

All the air rushed out of her with the jolt, and pain shot through her knees.

Tears pricked her eyes. “Hello? Anyone? Please! I need help!”

Refusing to care, the snow continued to fall.

Gritting her teeth, Terlu picked herself up and stumbled onward. Pushing another branch aside, more carefully this time so the snow didn’t dump on her again, she stepped out of the forest into a clearing.

Ahead of her was a window. Many windows.

A wall of windows, framed in black iron that curled delicately around the panes in branch-like patterns.

The structure was massive—at least three stories high and so wide that she couldn’t see its corners.

Tilting her head back, Terlu looked up and up to a glass cupola on the top. Snow fell on it.

Stumbling forward, she reached the glass wall and pressed her hands against it as she looked inside.

It was cool but not icy, and she noticed there was no frost on the panes.

Instead the glass was cloudy, as if hot air inside had fogged it up.

It’s warm inside, she realized. Gloriously warm!

All she could see through the foggy glass was a tangle of shadows. And… green? It was filled with green.

It’s a greenhouse, she realized. An enormous greenhouse in the middle of the woods. It had to belong to someone, even if it was dark inside. If she could find the owner, perhaps she’d find her rescuer?

Not that they were a very good rescuer, leaving her out here in the cold. She’d forgive them, though, if they let her inside. I’ll forgive them instantly. They’d made her flesh again. Knocking on the glass, she called out again, “Hello! I’m out here! Please let me in!”

She walked along the glass wall, knocking as she went. It had to have a door, didn’t it? Or a window that opened? I suppose I could break the glass. But that would let the cold inside, as well as her, and what would the owner think of that?

If they hadn’t left her alone in the cold, she wouldn’t need to break a window.

Still, she’d rather not. It wouldn’t be the best introduction. Besides which, she wasn’t certain she could. It was thick glass, and her arms were shaking so badly that she wasn’t certain she had any strength in them.

Only as a last resort.