The last good week of autumn started to feel dreary, with a pale, low sun hanging over the horizon, casting long shadows that failed to provide even a hint of warmth to the frozen morning air.
Jacob stood at the edge of his small grid. He looked over the four beds he had claimed from the dead field.
The grasses he had planted there had done their best, though that effort had yielded very little.
The control bed was in the worst state. It was a thin fuzz of green that barely covered the dirt. The tips of the blades were already turning yellow.
The enchanted beds looked better at a glance. They had thicker patches and a slightly deeper color.
However, they only seemed successful when compared to the absolute failure of the control plot. Better than nothing was still far from a harvest.
He walked the length of the beds with his arms wrapped tight against the wind. The growth enchantment bed came first.
The plants there reached a little higher than the others. Their leaves were broader by half a finger.
The stand was denser, and the color was a bit deeper, yet it lacked the vitality he wanted to see.
The endurance bed showed shorter grass with tough stalks. They resisted the wind and felt solid under his touch, but they remained stunted.
The water-focused bed had the deepest green, but only in scattered clumps. It seemed the enchantment could not hold the entire patch together.
When he stepped back to view them as a group, the differences felt like a footnote rather than a breakthrough.
He pulled the notebook from his pocket and stared at the last recorded measurements. He added a final line for the season.
Numbers did not care about how hard he had worked or how much magic he had shoved into the stakes. The ledger told a simple story.
Everything here had failed to reach even the poorest stands on the western fields.
A week ago, he had refused to accept this result.
With Arthur's reluctant approval, Jacob had enchanted the big wagon that usually hauled heavy sacks.
He had crawled under the frame to work the etching tool along the axles and wheel rims. He pushed a strong version of the lightness and reinforcement patterns into the wood.
After four careful passes, the empty wagon pulled like a light cart. Even when it was fully loaded, it rolled more smoothly over the rough ground than it ever had before.
They had hitched the old donkey, Bramble, to the tongue. Jacob then spent long hours marching from the stream at the lower end of the property back up to the dead field.
He filled barrels until his arms shook. He watched the water slosh while the enchanted wheels seemed to float over the ruts.
The task required far less effort from the tired animal than usual, yet the toll on Jacob was high.
Day after day, he soaked the four beds. He poured until the soil shone dark, and his boots squelched with every step.
He kept a careful count to ensure each bed received an equal amount of water. He believed that if water was the missing piece, the grasses would surge.
They did not.
He saw a little more growth and a bit more color. There was some resistance to the wind, but then the progress stopped.
The blades stayed thin. The roots remained shallow. The color stayed faded and the soil cracked again as soon as the top layer dried.
Now, standing in the chill, he saw that the field had taken everything he had given it and simply refused to change.
He knelt beside the water-focused bed. He used his fingers to claw a small trench until he reached a deeper layer.
The soil beneath still held a trace of moisture, yet even there the roots were short. They ended in little knots that were twisted and brown. It did not look like the problem was simple dryness.
On an impulse, he scooped a pinch of soil into his palm and brought it to his nose. It smelled flat. It was not rotten or sour, but it lacked the rich scent of living earth.
He hesitated for a moment before he pressed a bit of the dirt to his tongue.
It did not taste earthy at all. There was none of the rich, loamy flavor found in the good plots near the house.
Instead, a sharp edge hit the sides of his tongue. This was followed by a dull bitterness.
It tasted faintly salty. It was not like fresh tears. It was like a pot that had boiled dry with too much mineral left at the bottom.
He spat into the furrow and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He gathered another pinch from a different bed to check again.
The control bed tasted the same. The growth and endurance beds carried that same strange, mineral sting.
The field was not just tired. It was salted due to overuse. The plants had been fighting something far worse than shallow roots or missing rain.
He sat back on his heels while the wind pushed cold fingers down the neck of his shirt.
The situation finally made sense. He thought of years of overworking the land during dry seasons.
He thought of water pulled from poor sources and floods that might have left deposits behind. Every cycle had concentrated whatever the land could not use near the surface.
His enchantments had helped a little. They had coaxed the plants to push harder and live longer, which only meant the grasses had struggled more fiercely before losing.
Magic could not convince the roots to drink poison and thrive.
Jacob rose slowly and brushed the dirt from his trousers. He looked over the field one last time.
The stakes still held a weak thrum of power, but there was nothing more for them to do until the season changed.
A gust of wind rolled down from the north. It was sharp enough to sting his ears. And it carried the smell of frost and the promise that winter was arriving.
He pulled his coat tighter and closed the notebook with a firm snap.
"All right," he said. He spoke to the beds and the stakes. "You do not want to grow for me yet. And that is fine. I will figure out how to fix salt, and I will come back."
The next steps would not happen in this field. They would happen in the barn by lamplight.
He would turn the problem over in his mind like one of his complex, multi-faced runes. For now, the land would sleep under the snow. His experiments would have to wait.
He turned his back on the dead field as another blast of icy wind shoved at his shoulders. The stakes and the thin grasses faded behind him as he walked toward the house.
The mineral sting stayed with him all the way to the kitchen door, a gritty reminder that the earth was fighting him with more than just silence.
He had an entire winter to think, and now that he knew exactly why the plants were dying, he could finally stop guessing and start building a solution.