Ilse had climbed the Sky Pine every winter solstice since she was twelve, one of a dozen villagers who made the frozen pilgrimage to harvest the single crop that grew nowhere else in the valley — small green fruit that ripened only at the very crown of the ancient tree, beneath the tiny shrine some forgotten hand had built into its highest branches centuries ago.
This year, for the first time, she climbed alone.
The elders who usually led the harvest had grown too old for the ladders. It fell to Ilse, at nineteen, to reach the crown by herself and bring back enough fruit to see the village through the worst of the frost — a task that had always taken six climbers working together, now resting entirely on one set of cold hands.
She was halfway up the final ladder, fingers numb, when the shrine’s small door creaked open above her — something she’d never once seen happen in seven years of climbing.
“You’re alone,” said a voice from within, small and dry as old paper. “That hasn’t happened since the tree was young enough to remember its own roots.”
“The others couldn’t come,” Ilse said, too tired and too cold for anything but plain honesty. “I didn’t want the village to go without.”
Something shifted inside the shrine — not quite a blessing, not quite a laugh, some old and patient thing in between. “Then climb the last stretch with an open hand instead of a closed fist. The tree gives more easily to those who ask without demanding.”
Ilse reached the crown with her palm open, and found, waiting there, more fruit than six climbers together had ever carried down in a single season — enough, she understood, not just for this frost, but for several winters the village hadn’t yet learned to worry about.