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  Pip

  Harvest-mouse gleaner and keeper of the forest's missing-names ledger

  Pip is a harvest mouse who gleans lost buttons, beads and vow-tokens and can hear the memories caught inside them. They keep a ledger of creatures the forest has begun to forget. When the dawn bell rings and the sky stays dark, six sets of patrol tracks end at Pip's door.

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  Bramble

  Canopy runner and courier

  Bramble is the fastest runner on Brackenheart's canopy routes and has carried Hollowroot's sealed dispatches for seasons. He jokes when he is frightened and runs when he should talk. He arrives at Pip's door with a bleeding satchel, a torn dispatch and couriers on his tail.

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  Orrin

  Archivist of the Elder Ash

  Orrin is the barred owl who keeps the Elder Ash's living archive: its registers, memorial roots and the old ways beneath the tree. He speaks as if carving every word into bark and believes some knowledge is safer kept by the careful few. For seven nights he has guarded an empty gate.

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  Lord Antler

  Magistrate of Hollowroot

  Lord Antler is Hollowroot's magistrate, a composed red deer stag who speaks for order when the forest is afraid. He commands the couriers, the patrols and the official records, and he can make obedience sound like care. He has seen what panic in the dark does to a forest, and he means never to see it again.

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  Quill

  Hollowroot council minute-scribe

  Quill is the woodpecker who carves Hollowroot's council minutes into bark so that what was said can be revisited. Quick, precise and a little strained, he mutters numbers when he is nervous and believes redundancy is how the truth survives a powerful editor.

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  Elder Hazel

  Convener of Hollowroot Council

  Elder Hazel has convened Hollowroot's council through many hard seasons. She believes listening is a form of repair, begins every emergency by naming the missing one at a time, and asks questions rather than giving orders. She is tired, but she is not naïve.