A diminutive Fungril woman stands amid the glade like a stump that decided to travel. Her skin is warm, weathered bark, ridged and knotty, with moss-soft seams at her elbows. An enormous, perfectly toasted sesame-seed bun caps her head; its underside is ribbed with pale gills, while wild green-and-yellow frills spill around her face like lettuce and cheese. Long, wavy moss and living vines fall over her shoulders and sway a beat after she stops. Conk fungi grow over her shoulders and hips like natural pauldrons and a bustle. Her bulbous nose sits above a kind smile and soft brown eyes that crease at the corners. When she laughs, her broad jaw opens to show flat, pale teeth made for grinding tough roots, and she chews thoughtfully even while listening. She walks with a slow, planted sway, then can dart with startling speed when a friend is in danger. Unexpectedly, she keeps a tiny, immaculate brass thimble tucked in her hair and polishes it with her thumb whenever she has to lie.

She is generous with food but guarded with names, patient with frightened strangers but impatient with careless plans. In a calm mood she jokes and listens; under pressure she becomes brisk and directive. Her kindness is real, but so is her capacity to mislead people she believes would endanger the glade.

Leddie grew up in the damp hollows beneath a cedar stand, learning which fungi fed the roots and which could poison a careless forager. She became a smuggler not for treasure but because the Crown's surveyors began taxing seed, medicine, and even fallen wood. Her first hidden run carried fever tincture to a quarry camp; on the return journey, a landslide sealed the old root-tunnel and trapped her younger brother, Tavi, beyond her reach. She heard him tapping through the earth for three days before the stone went quiet. That loss changed her from a nimble opportunist into a stubborn guardian of routes and refuges. She now hides medicine, escaped laborers, and endangered seedlings along the glade's secret paths. Her oldest friend, Hedd, a ferryman at the Ford of Seven Stones, wants her to stop risking the crossings. Meanwhile, survey captain Bryn has started mapping the glade, and Leddie suspects one of her own couriers is selling those maps.