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Millie bent over the sleeping possum and frowned. He'd wandered in and out of consciousness for half the night, and the wound in his side had turned angry and red an hour in. Whatever made that cut hadn't been clean, and she weighed that fact alongside his story with a growing dread in her belly.

Muggers on the Oakthorn road. It was unthinkable. The way between Sunnydown and Brambleward had been safe for decades, safer than any other road in all of the wild terrains. No one had come to violence on that path since the vulpine wars, since she was a child and her children only far flung dreams in a young squirrel's heart.

But the cut.

She perched on the very edge of the bed, careful to move slowly, to never jostle. Her paws lifted a clean rag from a bowl of chilled water. She wrung it gingerly and then pressed the compress over the reddened flesh. Patricia had helped her trim the fur back, and now a shorn patch haloed the cut, emphasizing its ugliness. Ugliness in the Oakthorn. Danger.

A bowl of Jacob's soup waited on the bedside table, tasted but not eaten. She remembered the possum's words, the subtle scrunching of his muzzle as the soup met his lips. Millie smiled, let her eyes drift back, and found the possum's open, fixed on her.

"Lovely," he whispered.

Millie frowned, jerked backwards.

"Your wound's infected," she said. Her eyes narrowed, squinted and tried to see what this stranger brought to her inn. Danger or assistance? Elijah's rough voice echoed in her thoughts and she cursed herself silently. Putting too much weight on the old toad's prophecy. Her desperation had driven her to metaphysics.

"You're trying to see right through me," he said. "It's unsettling."

"So is that," Millie pointed at the cut, frowning, trying to piece together the puzzle of him. "I'm afraid you'll be stuck with us until it heals, Hector."

His name rolled off her tongue like a bite of Jacob's soup. Bitter, but not entirely unpleasant. She'd had ample opportunity to inspect him while he slept, but he'd caught her at it, and her face heated. There was less to him that at first glance. Most of his bulk was fur, the dense, long coat of ivory and silver. Places on his body boasted longer hairs than her own tail, and his was totally bald, pale pink like a newborn kit. One of his ears had a nick out of it. His spotted muzzle boasted an angular scar. He was rough, rougher than any animal she counted among her acquaintances, and there was something oddly alluring about that.

He had to go as soon as possible.

"I've no money," he croaked, shook his head, and dropped his eyes away. "They took my bag, my blanket. Everything."

"Well, you'll fit right in then," she said. "Nothing for it. I can't have you dying halfway between here and Brambleward when I've more than enough empty rooms."

His eyes widened, and she knew he'd caught the bitterness in her tone. Millie waved off the look and shrugged.

"We've room. And you're in no shape to argue."

But in the back of her mind, she heard the toad's proclamation, the last word, echoing through winter-crisp air. Danger.

Millie stood, forced a smile, and backed toward the door.

"I can work," Hector said.

"Not at the moment." Her paws shuffled, sought the safety of the hall and escape downstairs.

"I can cook," he pressed on, jerking one paw toward the bedside table. "Better than that."

"We'll see," Millie said. In her mind, she heard the toad's voice. Help is coming. Her smile threatened to turn genuine. She felt it, the desire to hope, to latch onto a stranger's promise, and she brushed it aside with a flick of her tail. As if she could sweep the idea away. "Rest now."

She dashed through the door, closing it before he could speak again.

In the hall, Millie leaned against the wall and breathed. The ancient wood pressed against the side of her face. It was warm to the touch, slick from the paws of many animals over the years. Acorn brown, veined with swirling grain lines, and polished to a high sheen. It was home, and Millie felt the solidity of it, the depth of the trunk, the foundation of the mighty roots below, and the potential of the up-swept branches overhead.

"What's next?" She whispered to the tree. "What could possibly be next?

She pushed away from the silent wood and fluttered her tail. There were other guests, maybe not as many as they needed, but enough to give her plenty to do. She hurried to the hall's end, to the stairwell where the great spiral bored through the trunk's center. The sound of dinner drifted down the shaft, distant voices, the clatter of a dropped dish.

She should go up. Patricia had serving under control, but she should at least make an appearance. The lingering aroma of the burnt soup wafted from below, however, and Millie turned and worked her way down, past the lobby to the root rooms and the kitchen. She'd do more good on cleanup in this mood.

Voices from the kitchen stalled her progress, however. She stood on the bottom stair, one short step from the landing, with her paw curling around the smooth rail.

"Poor Millie, though."

Teresa. Millie growled and pressed her claws into the wood. She closed her eyes and reminded herself that the skunk meant well, that she had no idea how patronizing she was.

"It's not like business is booming," Teresa said. "I know how hard you all work, and for what? Winter is coming, and the rats don't exactly give away electricity."

"Mom'll manage." Jacob sounded defensive, clipped to Millie's ears. She wanted to hug him for it, but Teresa paid no attention to his tone.

"Of course she will," she purred. "She's just so tough. I can't imagine what I'd do without my Henry to rely on."

A mumble answered her, slurred and incoherent. It suggested Roger was awake, at least enough to put in his two cents, intelligible or not.

"That's right," Jacob said, and she could tell from his voice he'd made no more sense of the raccoon's speech than she had. "Mom's got us."

Millie sucked in a breath, felt her chest tighten. She had them, surely. But they should be living their own lives. They should be free of her mess.

She turned without meaning to, started back up the stairs automatically. Both touched and horrified, Millie climbed her tree, climbed the spiral inside her inn, and felt the storm winds raging outside as if the trunk were made out of paper.