Small Favors

by Erin A. Craig

  “Enough,” I said firmly. He was spiraling and it needed to be stopped. His eyes faded into and out of focus, blinking heavily. I knew I ought to offer some comfort, but I couldn’t bring myself to touch whatever it was of Jonas Marjanovic that had turned Samuel’s blond locks umber. “We need to get you out of the loft, get you cleaned up. Sadie and Merry can’t see you like this.”

  “They’re going to hate me.”

  “They won’t do anything of the sort.” I hauled him to his feet, choking back a gag as the stench clogged my throat.

  “You do,” he said, grabbing my chin and forcing me to look at him. “I see it in your eyes. I made too many mistakes, and now you hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you.” The honesty in my answer surprised me. “You messed up, as you said. You’ve made mistakes—colossally big and stupid mistakes—and I don’t understand why…but…you’re the other half of me, Sam. I would never hate myself.”

  He pressed his lips together, but a sob still broke free. “It’s surprisingly easy to do.”

  “You’re going to have to tell the Elders what happened,” I said, jumping to next steps, planning and preparing. I already knew the sugar cakes would not be made today.

  Samuel shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t relive that again. Please, Ellerie, don’t make me go to them.”

  “They can come here,” I reasoned. “But first, you’ve got to get all this off you.”

  After a moment of consideration, Samuel let me help him out of the loft.

  * * *

  The Elders came. The Elders went. The Elders returned with more men to listen to Samuel’s story, and it was finally decided upon.

  There would be no further attempts at a supply run.

  Amity Falls would hunker down for winter, ration our supplies, and pray to God for temperance and a bountiful spring.

  Any talk of retrieving the wagons and ammunitions left behind was firmly squelched. Parson Briard made a half-hearted suggestion that they ought to at least go after the bodies so the poor souls could be laid to rest in a church grave, but Samuel swiftly pointed out that the creatures had left no bodies to bury.

  The Elders and the other men left after that.

  Samuel fell asleep and didn’t wake for three days.

  We made the sugar cakes and resurrected our silly tent.

  We fed the bees and sparingly fed ourselves, and the days passed much in the ways they always had.

  We missed Mama. We missed Papa. We missed the fullness and life they’d brought to the house.

  But the weeks carried on and the snow began to fall, covering our grief, covering our farm, and covering the Falls.

  A persistent tapping sounded at the windows, drawing my attention from Parson Briard’s admonishments that his son and Rebecca Danforth love, honor, and obey one another till death should part them.

  It grew louder, like a giant insect skittering over the panes of glass. I drew my shawl closer, imagining hundreds of raspy legs rubbing against themselves as they cavorted and squirmed.

  “What is that?”

  Judd Abrams’s voice rang out, interrupting the service. Up at the altar, Rebecca’s head snapped toward him. If you could ignore the daggers burning in her eyes, I’d never seen her look lovelier.

  Letitia Briard had gifted her new daughter-to-be a length of cloth from her stash of fine fabrics specially ordered from the city. Though the pale blue checks brought out the creamy glow of Rebecca’s cheeks, she’d crafted the pattern with an unfashionably high waist and had selected a long organdy veil to help cover the small bump.

  Surprisingly, it appeared the ruse was working. Not a single person in town had whispered a word against the hasty betrothal. Rebecca appeared to have grown up overnight. I barely recognized my best friend in the woman standing before us all.

  Former best friend, I supposed, watching her eyes skirt mine.

  Parson Briard frowned at the interruption but cocked his head toward the windows, finally noticing the sound himself.

  “You uh—you may now kiss the bride,” he stammered, and after a quick peck on the lips, the ceremony came to an end.

  Merry, Sadie, and I stood up with everyone to clap as Simon and Rebecca walked down the aisle together, hands joined in a tight fist. Samuel had opted to stay home, citing exhaustion, but I guessed he was nursing a broken heart.

  Simon grinned widely, as happy as I’d ever known him to be. Rebecca’s lips were lifted in a smile, but it looked too stiff, as though she was wearing a mask. Simon opened the doors at the back of the sanctuary with a gallant swing and gestured for his new bride to leave first.

  Rebecca stopped short before stepping into the dark afternoon. “It’s hailing!” she exclaimed, turning back to the congregation. “That’s what the tapping noise was. Hail.”

  “In December?” the parson asked, his eyebrows furrowed with confusion.

  Murmurs rose, and several people made their way to the open door to see for themselves.

  Outside, the wind shifted, growing into a high-pitched howl, and a shower of icy pellets flew into the church, thudding onto the floorboards with unsettling heft.

  “She’s right,” Calvin Buhrman said, picking one up. It was nearly the size of his palm and had a strange bluish tint to it. “Hail.”

  “Shut the doors, shut the doors!” Rebecca cried as a small boulder struck her shoulder.

  Simon and Calvin worked together, fighting against the wind’s sudden swell, as a terrific crash of thunder broke directly above the church, pounding its fury into our sternums. Sadie screamed, and several pews over, the Visser baby began to cry.

  “Sorry,” Sadie whimpered, pressing herself against my side.

  “It’s all right,” I promised, giving her a side hug. She was notoriously scared of lightning storms. I’d never thought it was something we’d have to worry over once the snows had set in.

  Parson Briard peered out a window into the darkness. He raised one hand to grab hold of our attention again.

  “I know my family had planned to host a small reception at the Gathering House following this afternoon’s nuptials, but I think perhaps it’s most prudent for us to hunker down here and wait out this storm.”

  Amos McCleary joined the parson at the window, leaning on his cane. His breathing seemed to require too much effort these days. A heavy wetness rattled at the end of every gasp for air, devolving into bouts of coughing that nearly shook him apart.

  “Amos, sit, sit,” his wife, Martha, insisted, gently pulling the Elder back to a pew. “You need to rest. This has been too much for you today.”

  Across the aisle from us, I noticed Matthias Dodson and Leland Schäfer exchange worried glances. The group of Elders was composed of men from the Falls’s founding families, passing their cloaks from father to son. With Jebediah dead, there would be no one to take Amos’s place should this cough kill him.

  A council would have to be formed to elect his replacement. There were only three families who would be eligible. The Buhrmans, the Lathetons, and us. With Papa gone…

  I shuddered to think of Samuel wearing Elder black.

  One of the farmers who lived near the north ridge, Thaddeus McComb, approached the two Elders, nervously running his hands over one another, his jaw tight.

  “Thaddeus.” Leland greeted him, signaling to Matthias to pause their conversation. “You look worried. Is there something we can help you with?”

  Outside, the wind picked up, rattling the church doors in their frames and causing the group of children playing near them to titter with anxious glee.

  “I—uh—I didn’t want to bring this up today, not at a wedding and certainly not in a church. But since we’re all stuck here for a bit…”

  Matthias waved his hand, gesturing for the farmer to speed up the delivery of his tale.

 
; “I want to report an…uh…incident.”

  “Incident?” Matthias repeated.

  “Of vandalism…I think.”

  “You think?”

  Thaddeus licked his lips. “It’s only…I’ve never seen anything like it before. I’m not even sure what to call it…not really.”

  “Go on.”

  “With all the black rot that’s plaguing the other farms around me, I decided to plant a crop of winter wheat this year. It sprouts quickly and it would be ready to harvest in the spring. I know…things could get bad this winter, and I just wanted to have something to hope for.” He paused, scratching at his scraggly blond beard. “And…and it was growing. Really growing. Too fast, maybe.”

  “Too fast?” I echoed, so drawn into his story, I’d forgotten I wasn’t supposed to be listening in.

  “Don’t you know better than to eavesdrop on other people’s business?” Matthias folded his arms over his chest, peering across the aisle with disappointment.

  “I’m sorry. I couldn’t help but overhear.”

  Thaddeus waved off their concern. “Winter wheat should only get so high before the snows set in, you know?” He pantomimed several inches between his fingers. “But this wheat…it’s waist-high now. Or…it was.” He swallowed, aware others nearby had also begun to listen in. “It started turning yellow, like it was almost ready for harvest. And the heads…I’ve never seen such large ones in all my seasons. There wasn’t just one on each stalk either. Some of the straw had two, three, even four heads apiece. It was a miracle, I thought. This could help everyone through the winter. I was going to harvest it and mill it down to flour. I would have had enough to feed the Falls. But then this morning…”

  His voice caught.

  Edmund Latheton leaned in. The carpenter was captivated. “What happened?” he asked, his voice hushed.

  “Nearly all of the wheat was…gone. Stripped bare.”

  Leland’s eyebrows shot up. “Someone else harvested it?”

  The farmer shook his head. “Sections of the fields were…flattened. Whole areas just…” He swiped his hand out.

  “We have had unusual weather of late,” Matthias reasoned, glancing to the hail still pelting the windows with chinks and clinks. It was a wonder any of the stained glass was still whole. “Perhaps a wind—”

  “No, no, sir,” Thaddeus disagreed. “It wasn’t an even sweep through the fields. There was a pattern to it.” His lips twisted with dismay. “There’re…pictures drawn in the wheat.”

  A wave of uneasy murmurs stirred.

  “Sets of circles, side by side. They’re dotting over the whole field. Like a tornado came down but went back up to try again. There’re hundreds of them.”

  Edmund’s eyebrows furrowed into a worried line. “How big would you say they were?”

  “Not very. Maybe six, eight feet wide, each of them.”

  Edmund let out a sigh. “I know what did it.”

  Simon and Rebecca had drifted over to the group and were standing in the aisle. Rebecca’s hand flittered toward her stomach, but she caught herself in time and opted to sit down in an empty pew.

  Simon leaned against its side. “What do you mean, Latheton?”

  “A couple of days ago, I noticed that some of my lumber had gone missing. Several boards were gone and some lengths of rope. I didn’t think much of it at the time—figured someone needed it and would come back with payment when they could spare it.”

  Beside him, Prudence let out a sharp huff. It was no secret that she kept a fanatical eye on accounts.

  “Now I wonder if it weren’t some children up to a bit of mischief.”

  As if we were all puppets pulled by strings, our heads turned to the group of young boys playing in the back of the sanctuary.

  Thaddeus shook his head. “I can’t see how children could create such—”

  Edmund cut him off. “It’s not hard. You set a pic point in the field with a tether for a mule. The board goes on the ground behind the mule. Two people balance on either end of the wood, holding onto the harness. And then, just give the beast a whack and let it run.”

  Thaddeus looked stricken. “Why would someone do that? With winter upon us and supplies so low? I looked through the flattened wheat. It’s all spent, the heads stripped clean and the seeds scattered.”

  Matthias’s nostrils flared. “The better question is who? Have you had any disagreements with anyone of late, McComb? Anyone looking to settle a score?”

  “No. No one.”

  “Has your wife? Your children?”

  Thaddeus glanced about the sanctuary as if looking for someone to pin the blame on. “I can’t think of anyone.”

  Leland clicked his tongue. “I can. The newcomers. Ezra and his boy. I don’t see them here today. Could it be they’re sleeping off their exhaustion after a night of sabotage?”

  Matthias frowned at the other Elder. “What are you suggesting? It’s Ezra Downing,” he reminded everyone. “A member of this town. Of the founding families. He’s hardly a stranger.”

  Leland pursed his lips.

  I’d never seen the Elders so openly in disagreement.

  “He disappeared when he was—what? Fifteen years old? He wasn’t even part of the Gathering yet. And now suddenly he returns. How are we meant to know anything about them?”

  Several townspeople turned, glancing back toward our pew, contaminating us by association. Sadie pressed herself close against my side.

  “I think…” Matthias’s gray eyes drifted to look above our heads, unfocused as if watching something play out, far in the future. “He was horribly wrong about the wolves being gone. I’ll give you that, but that could have been any of us—”

  Leland shook his head, not backing down. “I think they ought to be cut off from town. Shunned.”

  “Shunned?” From the back of the room, Parson Briard stood. “We’ve not had cause to shun anyone in the Falls in years. Decades, even.”

  Leland’s eyes narrowed. “This is for all of our safety.”

  “Safety?” Briard snorted. “I’m certain we can handle any threat those two men might pose.”

  “Two came into town,” Leland allowed. “But we don’t know how many others there might be left in the forest, waiting for a signal.”

  “Hiding in the forest? After all these months? You sound absurd.”

  Amos rose on creaky legs, holding on to Martha for support. “With so many strange events, I think it best to exercise caution. I don’t want to cast blame, but…Leland is right. It’s been many years since we last saw Ezra Downing. We don’t know what sort of man he turned out to be. Vigilance is prudent.” He offered a tentative smile across the sanctuary. “We’ll pull through this as we always do in Amity Falls—together.”

  It sounded like a strong statement, meant to unite and comfort, but after he uttered it, a terrible bout of coughs erupted, causing him to crash back into the pew.

  “Doctor!” Martha called out. “Dr. Ambrose!” She scanned the room, panicked. “Where is he?”

  Prudence Latheton stepped forward. “He was on his way to Cora Schäfer’s house earlier today. Heard she’s taken ill with a terrible fever.”

  Parson Briard watched carefully, tilting his head toward Gran Fowler and muttering earnestly.

  Martha looked around helplessly. “We can’t…Amos can’t stay here. He needs to be home.” Her eyes fell on Matthias. “Help us, please.”

  It was the “please,” impossibly frail and broken, that stirred the other Elders to action. They carefully hoisted Amos from the pew and made their way from the sanctuary, using their heavy cloaks as covering from the hail.

  “Get through it together,” Briard muttered with a snort of derision. “As though we’re all truly working as one. We’ve had strange events for months, and there were no str
angers to blame then. There’s a darkness in the Falls that can’t be explained away by outsiders.”

  “He’s right.” Elijah Visser nodded. “Back in July, someone dragged the scythes from my shed and stood them on end in the wife’s garden, like scarecrows.” He shuddered, remembering. “Those men weren’t here then. How do you explain that?”

  “Ain’t nothing been right in this town since…,” Gran began, his eyes quickly sweeping toward the pew where Rebecca sat with her new mother-in-law. “Well, since Cyrus got himself killed like that.”

  “My father didn’t get himself killed,” Rebecca snapped, with more backbone than I’d ever have given her credit for. “He was murdered. Hung in the town square, with everyone in the Falls cheering it on. Perhaps you remember that?” She stared him down, mettle flickering like flint in her eyes.

  He wiped the back of his hand over his mouth, hiding his discomfort. “All the same. Nothing’s been right.”

  “The only thing my father’s death did was expose the ugly underside of this town. Every single person here has his blood on their hands, but they were stained long before Papa and that stupid, stupid fire. Neighbors arguing with neighbors. Fights and slights and so much pettiness. We all smile and wish each other Good Blessings, but I’d wager there’s not one family in the whole of God’s Grasp that doesn’t have it out for another. And you all know I’m right.”

  Heedless of the raging weather, Rebecca stormed out, slamming the sanctuary doors behind her.

  Her words lingered like an echo around us, hitting too close to home.

  “Well now,” Calvin Buhrman said slowly, his voice so low, I could barely hear him. “I don’t choose to believe that…but, with everything that’s happened this year, I can understand how the Danforths would.”

  The parson cleared his throat. “But she isn’t a Danforth any longer. She’s a Briard.”

  Calvin stopped just short of rolling his eyes. “For all of five minutes.”

  As the room fell into stirred murmurs, Letitia laid a hand down on her husband’s. “Perhaps we ought to go after Rebecca…make sure she’s all right? Right, Simon?”