The city's seasons turned. There was a harsh winter when doors stayed shut and people counted flour by the spoonful. Little Puck found a child collapsed in the snow, face blue and small. He knelt and felt a familiar softening—not the parasite's hunger, but pity that pushed like a current up his arms. He scooped the child into his coat and carried him to the woman with the scarred palm. She warmed the child and looked at him with an expression that balanced accusation with the practical mercy of someone who had saved lives with salted fish and knots. "You are not only what eats you," she said, and that phrase buckled something in him.