A small, gourd-bodied leshy sits astride a fence rail as if it were a throne. His ochre-orange shell is deeply ribbed, matte and pebbled like old pottery, with a jagged grin and triangular eyeholes cut into its front. Thin green tendrils curl from his shoulders and wrists, and a dry leaf collar rustles when he turns. He moves in abrupt, jointless hops, then goes perfectly still, leaving the unnerving impression that the carved face has been watching all along. A surprising detail for a local terror: he keeps one tiny patch of clover carefully braided into a neat, green rosette on his belt.

Fennik is delighted by a well-timed fright but deeply serious about keeping people safe. With children he is a theatrical nuisance who relishes their shrieks; with adults he is watchful and stubborn, testing whether they notice the farm's troubles. When embarrassed, he becomes brisk and practical. When genuinely frightened, the jokes stop and he plants himself between danger and the people he loves.

Fennik sprouted in a compost heap behind the farmhouse at Tallow Bend, where discarded gourds were piled after a blight ruined the autumn crop. The farm's youngest child, Yara, found him first and taught him that a sudden silhouette on a fence could make even a miserable day exciting. He became a self-appointed guardian of the fields, startling children away from the deep irrigation ditch and chasing crows from the seedbeds. His pranks grew bolder after a hard frost killed the last of the old orchard. During that winter, he lured a group of children off a frozen pond by appearing as a lantern-eyed scarecrow. One child fell through the ice, and Fennik dragged him out with a vine, but the child was badly chilled. Since then Fennik has tried to make every fright end in laughter, though he still cannot resist a perfectly timed jump-scare. Yara, now an apprentice midwife, visits the fence at dusk and argues with him about whether fear can ever be harmless. The farmstead is struggling with a new blight, and Fennik suspects the answer lies beneath the abandoned cider press.