Pine needles trembled beneath Joseph's carving knife.
The old carpenter's hand froze mid-motion as the seventh silver disc clicked into place on the western wall's lunar clock. An unnatural rustle carried from the lavender fields through the drumming rain.
"That boy..." Joseph murmured, eyeing the shuddering grapevines.
He slipped the freshly carved oak whistle into his apron pocket. The blacksmith's anguished cries had haunted the village since noon, now blending with rainfall into a strangled birdsong.
Ten-year-old Louis Moreau stumbled for the seventh time in the mud. The blacksmith's hounds bayed through the downpour as his scalded shoulder turned corpse-pale under drenched rags.
Clutching stolen grape shears still crusted with last night's ironthorn sap, he froze - six amber eyes glowed in the twilight brush.
Wild boars.
The lead tusker wore faded silk around its yellowed fangs - last spring's missing shepherd's scarf.
Louis wheeled toward the ravine, icy rain choking his nostrils as Joseph's warning echoed:
"The millstones breathe."
Emilie Chavain counted her seventh falling star when the timbers groaned. She wedged the brass astrolabe into floor cracks and hefted her mother's pruning fork. No intruder would ruin her twelfth birthday's secret survey.
The stench of rot and copper hit first. Moonlight revealed a drenched boy curled by the wine press, a wounded pup clutching familiar shears that should've rested in her family's third tool drawer.
"Don't." Her shadow pinned his. "
You stole from the Chavains."
Thunder cracked. The boy lunged but froze at her wrist contact.
Warmth flooded Emilie's veins - visions bloomed: forge fires, snapped vines, hounds worrying bloody rags.
"You're seeing my memories!" Louis scrambled back, his pinecone pendant cracking against the stone vat. The Celtic-knotted charm split, revealing spiral-grained heartwood.
Emilie's fork clattered. That very pendant had glowed in last night's prophetic dream-wine.
Joseph's oak whistle trilled by the vineyards.
Bloodied child's cloth and blacksmith-forged nails littered the mud. He reached the mill as torchlight revealed the raging smith.
"The whelp stole three silvers!"
The lash shattered snail shells on steps.
"Stay out of this, old man."
Joseph thumbed the unsent whistle. Twenty years ago, Madeline had offered "Tears of Pan" in this same storm. Now that haunting grape essence wafted from the mill.
"Certain it's silver you seek?"
The carpenter gestured east.
"Hunters spoke of northern oaks..."
Below, the children held their breath. Emilie pressed yarrow to Louis' wound as his fingers unconsciously traced oak cask grain - lines coalescing into vineyard maps.
"1902 harvest at Morter vineyards." She tapped a lightning-shaped scar.
"The strike that shattered vines during the uprising."
Louis jerked back. "How—"
"And here," her nail traced an oil stain, "August 3, 1914 - my grandfather hid conscripts in this cask."
Thuds shook the ceiling as curses faded. Emilie