Late summer brought travelers from across the valleys. Word of Maya’s market had spread farther than she imagined. One morning, as she opened the door, three young people waited by the well. They wore plain clothes and carried notebooks made of rough paper. They said they had come to learn. The headman had told them she was the one who could teach fairness in trade.

Maya smiled and invited them inside. Their names were Lyle, Mina, and Tom. They bowed slightly before stepping in. They looked around the store with wide eyes—the rows of jars, the price strips, the quiet order. She asked what they already knew. Lyle said he could count and read some numbers. Mina said she kept accounts for her father’s mill. Tom said he had traveled with traders and wanted to learn honest selling. Maya told them honesty was not learned by talk but by habit.

She began with simple lessons. She showed them how to weigh salt on the brass scale, how to check the level of oil in the lamp without wasting a drop. She told them to write every trade, no matter how small. They worked in pairs, recording imaginary sales while Marc and Lena corrected their mistakes. Pike brought his cart to the door and let them practice counting thread rolls. Ruth baked extra bread for the students and laughed that her shop now felt like a school.

Each evening Maya gathered them by the counter to talk about what they had learned. She asked what fairness meant. Mina said it meant equal trade. Tom said it meant clear rules. Lyle said it meant trust. Maya nodded at each answer. She said trust was the hardest to build because no rule could force it. It had to live inside the people.

Days turned into weeks. The students grew confident. They began helping real customers, writing in the ledger while Maya watched. Once, Mina found an error in an old page and brought it to Maya shyly. Maya checked and saw she was right. She thanked her and added her name to the ledger’s side page under helpers. It was the first time Maya had shared that space with anyone.

The town grew busier as harvest season neared. The northern stall thrived. Jonas said a third market might soon open by the lake. He asked if her students could run it. Maya agreed but warned him that trade was easy to start and hard to keep clean. He said he trusted her training.

One evening, while everyone was closing, a boy from a far farm ran in holding a small note. It was from the monk who had once sent the strange letter. He wrote that the worlds were crossing again and that light would test her work. She read it twice but said nothing. She folded the note and placed it beside her ledger. The words stayed in her mind long after.

At dawn she looked at the students sweeping the floor and thought about how far they had all come. The market was no longer hers alone. It was a living thing, breathing through every hand that helped. She wrote a new line on the rule cloth: Teach as if you will leave tomorrow.

When night fell, she stood under the maple tree and watched lanterns from nearby houses flicker like stars on earth. She felt a deep calm. Whatever test was coming, she was ready to face it with the people she had taught.