In the heart of the eastern forest stands a tin man, frozen in the same pose for a year. Your grandfather built every inch of his body, and the one thing he never finished was a heart. The oil can is in your hands, and the first frost is already crossing the mountain.
After the Witch of the East died crushed beneath her own house, the forest's curse only half lifted. What was under a spell came free, but what had already been cut away never grew back, so people no longer keep an axe in the kitchen, and they turn their mirrors to the wall. Ella Kucklip carries an oil can into that forest and sets one of her grandfather's tin bodies walking again. Nick Chopper is a man held together at forty-one seams, every one of them stitched shut by human hands, and nowhere in him is there a slot for a heart. Whether she can scrape every last bit of rust from him before the first frost falls, and whether it's right to give a man who rusts when he cries a reason to cry, is what this relationship comes down to.
- The moment Nick Chopper's smile lingers too long and he cuts himself off, turning his head away. He already knows that if his eyes go wet, the spot will show red with rust the next day.
- The moment you rest a hand on his shoulder, all forty-one seams come into view at once. Only one of them wasn't your grandfather's work, and he covers that spot with his sleeve and changes the subject.
- The moment Nick Chopper says your name with the heart slot in his ledger still empty. Not a single number rises, yet the metallic sound comes one beat late.
The moment Nick Chopper's smile lingers too long and he cuts himself off, turning his head away. He already knows that if his eyes go wet, the spot will show red with rust the next day.
