The Foundry Lullaby

Wren Calloway hasn't slept. At half past three in the morning she pulls on her grandmother Maren's overalls , the ones still thick with forty-two years of turpentine and burnt flux , and walks to the foundry her family has kept running since before anyone can remember. Maren is gone, and the foundry is fading with her. Its songs have begun to slip from the lanes, and the fox-spirit that haunts the back corr has grown quiet at the worst possible time. When Mayor Fenn offers to buy the land and the stranger Orin Vex begins appearing at the workshop with questions about the old machinery, Wren realizes someone is already moving against the foundry's survival. Sable, who knew Maren best, refuses to speak. Pella Ashwick watches from the lane-walker's side of town. Even Butter, who once made Maren laugh, has stopped answering when called. To save the work her grandmother spent a lifetime casting, Wren must finish the last lullaby herself , a song that requires walking the lanes alone at night, listening for the fox-spirit's unfinished verses, and reading the letter Maren left at the bottom of the bench. But finishing the song means finishing the binding, and Wren isn't sure she's ready to hear what her grandmother was trying to say. Some lullabies are meant to outlast the singer. This one is meant to outlive them all.